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Up and Down the Irrawaddl 



By the same Author. 

THE NEW AND THE OLD. 

As> seen with the eyes of a 
Sentimental Voyager. 

BEING ROMAN; "YC ADVENTURES IN CALIFORNIA AND INDIA. 

^r "<ely Illusirs ?d. i2mo. Muslin, 
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Up and Down the Irrawaddi ; 



OR 



THE GOLDEN DAGON 



BEING 

Passages of Adventure in the Burman Empire. 



By j. w. Calmer, m.d., 



New and Revised Edition. 



M& 



NEW YORK: £ 
Rudd & Carleton, 130 Grand Street, 
(brooks building, cor. of broadway.) 
MDCCCLIX. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

J. W. PALMER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Conrt of the United States for the 

Southern District of New York. 



■ 






B. CRAIGHEAD, 

Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotype*, 

ffiaiton Butltifng, 

81, 83, and 85 Centrt Street. 



§eMcatt0n. 



WITH NO LESS GRATITUDE THAN AFFECTION, 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

TO MY WIFE. 



Publishers' Note, 



This volume was originally entitled " The Golden 
Dagon ; or, Up and Down the Irrawaddi." In the 
present edition the titles have been transposed, in 
order to avoid the misprint of " Golden Dragon" 
which has so often annoyed the author in news- 
papers. 

New York, May 1, 1859. 



PREFACE 



It may be a 
satisfaction to 
the adventur- 
ous reader, 
who is willing 
to go drifting 
Up and Down 
this crooked 
river with me, 
to know that 
the sights he 
will see on its 
banks, and the 
sounds he will 
hear, are not 

illusions— that \lM^aflW^^^^^%^TW&Mi 1 - 
the escapades .......o '~„ , T „,~ .' MUIitt 

in which he is invited to participate are no more inventions, than 
the crocodiles are trunks of dead trees, or the elephants mighty 
boulders. 

New Yoek. June D, 1S59. 




J. W. P. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

PAOB 

Hong-Kong— The Bore— Ay-Chung— Kumpny's But- 
tons 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Singapore — The Malays' Vengeance . . , . 14 

CHAPTER III. 
The Straits of Malacca — A tame Myth . . .26 

CHAPTER IV. 
Penang — Running Amok ...... 30 

CHAPTER V. 

What we were going to fight about . . . .33 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Ghaut at Moulmein — Palkee-Garrees— Steam vs. 
Elephant ........ 41 

CHAPTER VII. 
Moulmein — Town and Cantonments .... 51 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Elephant-back— " Old Injin-Rubber "—The Boa — The 
Caves — Guadraa — The Bats 57 

CHAPTER IX. 
Dacoitees — A Burmese House . . , . .73 



Till CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

PAOS 

Honorable John and Dishonorable John — " The Old 
Yaller " — The Fighting Missionary — Our first Stock- 
ade— A Hero *78 

CHAPTER XI. 

Our Burmese Clients— War-boats— A funny Panic . 92 

CHAPTER XII. 

" All Together, Engage the Enemy !" — The Storming 
of Rangoon and Dallah — The Swimmer's Charm . 100 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Kemmendine — Fire Rafts — Confiding Creatures! — A 
"Wooden Gun — The Stockade — The Aspect and the 
Voices of the Night — Rangoon is ours — Bathing 
under Difficulties 105 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Magnanimous !— The Stockades of Rangoon— The 
Streets— The Machinery of Boodhism— The Golden 
Dagon— The Great and Little Bells— Boodh and 
11 Baccy "—The Ingathering— Young Shway-Madoo 115 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Lotos-Tanks — Testing the Water — The Poonghee- 
House— Black Art ... . . . 127 

CHAPTER XVI. 
A Prize and a Prisoner — Plenipotentiary Abdoolah — 
His Character and Costume— Sticks and Chickens — 
The great Battle of Pontalong . . . .132 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Our Miracles — The Fisherman's Butcha — The Tribute 
of Rotten Eggs — Blowing up a Poonghee . . 144 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

PAGE 

The Boodh . . .152 

CHAPTER XIX 

Doonoobyoo— The Grave of the Maha Bandoola — 
His Talipot Tree— His Plutarch— The Story of 
Zinguza 156 

CHAPTER XX. 
Shelling the Woons 168 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Our Convoy — The Dacoits' Ambush — Lynching Fra 
Diavolo — The wounded Women — Theen-gyee . .173 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Young Ingeeboo — His Shadows— His Tattoo . . 183 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Pagoda Road — Poonghee and Missionary— The 
Bazaar — Disemboweling the gods — Burmese Venera- 
tion 190 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Sports of the Grove— Foot-ball — Puppets — The 
Drama — A Burmese Rachel 196 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Mindakeen— One little romance of a Shoulder-Strap, 
and another of Paijaraas ...... 205 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

An Experiment — Bandoola's Bluff— Giving a little 
Hero the Slip . 211 



2 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

FAOB 

Prome — The Ladies— An indignant Bloomer— Surpris- 
ing a great General — Astonishing Him . . . 215 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
The Oath and Imprecations— Maidens, Wives, Concu- 
bines, and Prostitutes ...... 223 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

How it seems to own a "Woman — Little Mayouk— Her 
adventures . 232 

CHAPTER XXX. 
My adventure at Pegu . . . . . . 237 



APPENDIX. 

I. 

The Golden Dagon in 1590 . • . . . 293 

II. 

The Karens . . 295 

III. 

The Poonghees ........ 301 

IV. 

Burmese Law . • . . • • • . 304 

V. 

Imperial Vega . . ." ' 310 



x I 



" Next came one 
Who mourn 'd in earnest, when the captive ark 
Maim'd his hrute image, head and hands lopt off 
In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, 
Where he fell flat and sham'd his worshippers ; 
Dagon his name ; sea monster, upward man 
And downward fish ; yet had his temple high 
Rear'd in Azotus, dreaded through the coast 
Of Palestine, in Gath, and Ascalon, 
And Accaron, and Gaza's frontier bounds." 

Milton : Paradise Lost. 

"If you would see our pagodas, come as friends, and I will show 
to you. If you come as enemies — Land. 

The Maha Bandoola to Gen. Willoughby Cotton. 



Up and Down the Irrawaddij 

OR, 

THE GOLDEN DAGON. 



CHAPTER I. 

HONG-KONG THE BORE — AY-CHUNG KUMPNY'S BUTTONS. 

We kept lonesome companionship together, 
my cheroot, and I, in the verandah of Brooks's 
in Hong-Kong. 

Up a narrow climbing court, a score or two 
of yards off the main street, and hard by the 
gate of the Bishop's Palace, Brooks's was a 
famous house for reflection and billiards, and a 
bad (that is, a good) one for fleas — especially 
poor in prospect. 

But it had one evident advantage — it with- 
drew, as it were, from the town, affording you 
a respite from your Hong-Kong, and permitting 
you by snatches to dream that you were out of 
it: out of its swarms of entomological coolies 



2 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

and infectious beggars ; its white heat and its 
brown rascals ; its odious incense of joss-stick 
and opium pipes ; its jargon and jostle of foot- 
pad peddlers and piratical tankamen ; its cheer- 
ful chain-gang ; its sweaty chair-bearers ; its red- 
hot umbrellas ; and all the rest of noise, and 
filth, and bad smells, and vermin, and corner 
monstrosities of tumors, and ulcers, and cher- 
ished boils, and cultivated sores. 

For a brief and blessed season you had es- 
caped from your last accursed cripple — from 
the elephantiasis that had chased you round the 
corner, and the white leprosy that just missed 
you as you dived through the door of the nine- 
pin alley and fled up the narrow stairs, putting 
Brooks and his garrison between you and all 
the Flowery Kingdom. 

Brooks's is eminently a house to get away 
to ; and after the first three days of my fore- 
taste in Hong-Kong of that town's infernal 
counterpart, I blessed mine inn, as though I 
were Dives and had suddenly come upon a 
dewy bower, in among the brimstone, where 
something could be had to drink. 

I had " done" my Hong-Kong — Consul's, 



The Bore. 3 

Comprador's, Cusfcom-House, Club-House, Gov- 
ernment-House, Joss-House, Parade ground, 
Barracks, Library, Bishop's Palace, Cathedral ; 
and four features of the place had struck me — 
the sameness of the natives, the ferocity of the 
Sun, the indispensability of punkas, and the 
universal bore : The sameness of the natives — ■ 
whether the specimen under examination were 
man or woman, of fifteen or fifty — whether it 
were the same pig-eyed pertinacity who had 
played shadow to me ever since I landed, or a 
fresh one whom I now beheld for the first time — 
merry or miserable, bright or stupid : the fero- 
city of the Sun, like a fiery dragon filling the 
air with his scorching breath and wallowing in 
flames : the indispensability of fans, pendulating 
in every apartment, from the smoky den where- 
in your fat comprador compliments you in sour 
claret, to the high hall of the Cathedral, where 
" Joseph Victoria, Esq." — as a compatriot of 
mine once addressed the Lord Bishop — offers 
public proposals for the saving of your soul — 
a fan waving in the hand of every Hong-Kong 
citizen, from the greasy, bare-backed bearer 
who grunts along with your palankeen, to the 



4 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

illustrious " Fan-qui" who represents Her au- 
gust Britannic Majesty in those lovely latitudes, 
in her name disposing of pirates, dispensing 
opium, and " opening China" generally, over 
his tiffin : the universal bore — -the endemic 
Hong-Kong yawn, unmitigated by billiards or 
the Overland Mail, uninterrupted by a fire. 

My adventures had been neither many, nor 
choice: to climb the granite back of the 
town, where the streets are cut in stairs, to the 
house of a Company's Servant, whose wife — a 
gas-lighty ballet girl on furlough — was addicted 
to gin and water, and sempiternal whist; to 
penetrate, impelled by reckless curiosity, into 
the inner temple of a gambling house on the 
Victoria Road, whither multitudinous, parti- 
colored lanterns, and the file-and-saw treble 
of flowery song had attracted me, and where 
some retired assassins were playing a sort of 
Chinese " Simon says wiggle-waggle" for sam- 
shu ; to make a complimentary call on Ay- 
Chung, the loose beauty of the long-tailed 
Upper Ten : these constituted the sum of my 
excitements — or may I add a cobra decaudated 
in Brooks's Compound, and an ugly dog dis- 



Ay-Chung. 5 

comfited in single combat in the Bishop's 
grounds — achievements, both, of which I was a 
part ? 

Ay-Chung, lotos-lipped, and lush ! Truly, 
for her sake, I could find it in my heart to 
treat Hong-Kong to an amiable parenthesis. 
A comely maiden, and a comfortable, was that 
feminine fly in amber; not pig-eyed, she — 
Juno herself not more ox-eyed ; nor flat-nosed 
and slack-nostriled, but especially race-horsy 
in those particulars ; not leathery as to her, 
complexion, but olive-dyed and blush-mantled, 
and necked like Solomon's spouse. And then 
her smile, her waist, her foot! either would 
have made the fortune of Archilla Sarsaparilla, 
on Broadway. 

To hear Ay-Chung talk broken China was 
to forget Hong-Kong, and cease to wish you 
were dead. 

" Ay-Chung," sighed my devoted friend, Da 
Souza, of the Kumpny's service, whose acquaint- 
ance I had made nearly three hours before, 
" Ay-Chung, wont you marry me ?" 

It was Ay-Chung's pleasure to make answer 
that she was indisposed (in respect of my bo- 



6 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

som friend's society) and in no humor for 
nonsense, but that her sister was open to 
overtures towards an honorable alliance, and 
sophisticated in the forms of such business. 
Accordingly the Nourmahal of Hong-Kong 
delivered her meaning in the following mel- 
lifluous gibberish : 

" Mi no savee that pigeon ; mi too muchee 
seeckee insidee ; spose you likee more ploppa, 
can ketchee my seesta ; he savee that pigeon 
all ploppa — can do." 

But even Ay-Chung was but as curry to the 
dry rice of the Hong-Kong fare, and even her 
spiciness could not long continue to make its 
insipidities appetizing. So I withdrew with- 
in my cheroot, and entertained myself with 
wondering what would come next. 

The North Star, which had brought me 
hither from California, by way of the Hawaiian 
Islands, had gone to Macao to " tea,'' and 
would not return until after many days. I 
was left alone in China — a situation more 
picturesque than pleasant ; my nearest friend 
was six thousand miles off, and my dearest, 
twice as far. As Fanny Kemble used to say — 



Kumpny's Buttons. 7 

first I billiarded, and then I verandahed, and 
then I nine-pinned, and now and then I tanka- 
boated, and sometimes I native-quartered, and 
all the time I cherooted. 

One afternoon, as I sat alone in the spacious 
verandah — cheroot going, and legs, American- 
wise, reared up against the lattice, thinking 
how poor I was, and how little I cared for that, 
and how funny it was to be at one's heart's 
antipodes, and how slow " something" was in 
" turning up" — a Bengalee Kitmudgar, whose 
business it was to back my chair at tiffin, and 
browbeat the Chinaman whose business it was 
not to -fetch my ale, announced a " Kumpny 
Sahib," and at the same time handed me the 
card of " George J. Neblitt, H.C.S." 

The gentleman followed his name — a de- 
cidedly good-looking, well-dressed person, of 
forty or thereabouts — perhaps younger ; pre- 
possessing, and very conscious of it ; a lady's 
man on the face of him; the self-defensive 
reserve of the Englishman relaxed somewhat 
by the sailor. 

Bayard Taylor says if bear-skins and blankets 
were the fashion in the West-End, the true 



8 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

Cockney would sport them in Ceylon; and by 
the same token my visitor ignored palm-leaves 
and the ventilated sola, and made himself hot 
and happy in a silk hat. He had evidently 
been doing his calls of duty and compliment, 
for he was not yet at peace with his finger-nails, 
whose purity was plainly too recent to be safe. 
A light- blue frock of silk, trowsers (not panta- 
loons) of the same, a white Marseilles vest, a 
black tie, voluminous and carefully careless, 
white stockings on feet of gentlemanly dimen- 
sions, and dainty shoes of patent leather, 
plainly of Chinese make— these composed an 
outer man more than commonly agreeable. A 
few gilt buttons, bearing the Company's crown 
and lion, on coat and vest, were all that denoted 
his profession ; nothing signified his rank. 

He proceeded at once to business. 

The gallant Captain (for such he was) had 
the honor to command the Honorable Company's 
Steam Vessel, Phlegetho?i, then on her return to 
Calcutta from an expedition in the China Seas, 
to destroy piratical junks, and disperse the 
long-tailed Buccaneers, who, in those waters, 
overhaul honest merchantmen, and take lives 



Kumpny's Buttons. 9 

as well as toll. She lay at that moment in 
the harbor, in sight of Brooks's windows, de- 
tained by an untimely accident. 

Her Surgeon, returning from a dinner party 
on board a Peninsular and Oriental Company's 
Steamer, late on a dark night, had slipped 
overboard and was drowned. Captain Neblitt 
had a large and sickly crew, the worse for a 
protracted season of hard work and privation. 
His orders from the Admiral were imperative, 
not to proceed without a surgeon. Although 
there were several English men-of-war in port, 
the sanitary condition of the squadron required 
the constant attention of all its medical officers, 
consequently none could be spared to the Phle- 
gethon. Wherefore, the Captain had been beat- 
ing the town in the hope of finding some starving 
5 poticary, willing to be a Company's servant for 
the nonce, for the ecstasy of being his own 
master thereafter — or some erratic Sawbones, 
like myself, with a turn for traveling and no 
care for the morrow. If this last would suit 
him, I was his man ; and so, indeed, my fame 
had gone abroad, for a Dr. Barton, whoever he 

was, had sent the Captain, in his troubles, to 
1* 



lo Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

me, as an up-to-any thing circumnavigating the 
globe. 

"Was I a physician?" 

"I was." 

" And a surgeon also?" 

" Yes." 

" Had I ship-board experience?" 

"I had." 

" Was I prepared to join, and enter upon my 
duties, at once?" 

"Yes." 

" It was then three o'clock ; I should have 
to report myself at nine ; he would sail at day- 
break for Calcutta ?" 

" So much the better." 

"Then it was a bargain." 

"Perhaps. But softly, Captain — you will 
require to know who I am." 

" Of course, some form of introduction ; you 
will give me one or two good names — or we 
shall presently meet some of your friends — or we 
will call together on some merchant or Com- 
pany's servant. Who do you know ?" 

"No one." 

" Ah ! In Hong Kong— but in China ?" 



Kumpny's Buttons. 1 1 

"Not a soul." 

" How !— You are English ?" 

"No." 

" What then ?" 

" Yankee " 

" Ah, indeed, Sir — happy to make your ac- 
quaintance — greatly obliged for the prompt 
offer of your valuable services. But the case is 
peculiar ; I can remember no precedent for the 
appointment of your countrymen to surgeoncies 
in our service ; you will allow me to get further 
instructions from the Admiral. Of course you 
have at hand the highest testimonials of profes- 
sional qualification?" 

" Not a line." 

" Your diploma?" 

4t When I last beheld it — about three months 
after I came into possession, in due course of 
humbug, of that costly piece of parchment — a 
nigger baby in Virginia was playing with the 
red seal, and had taken the blue ribbon to dress 
up his kitten with." 

" Extraordinary people ! Really, I'm quite 
at a loss, Sir. What have you to propose ?" 

" Enough, I hope, to extricate you from your 



12 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

dilemma. — Being two chivalrous Anglo-Saxons, 
we will gallantly waive the nationalities and 
dispose of the American part of me by a brave 
stroke of courtesy. By a like argument, you 
will take my gentleman-status for granted ; and 
as for the professional attainments, it will be 
the easiest thing for the Admiral to convene a 
board of Examiners, composed of his own sur- 
geons, aboard his ship this afternoon. I will 
meet them promptly and they can try my medi- 
cal pretensions off hand." 

This proposition the Captain pronounced 
" highly American." Whether he meant a com- 
pliment or the reverse, he forgot to explain ; 
perhaps it was the enterprise he meant — per- 
haps the impudence ; at all events, he hurried 
off to lay this "highly American" plan before 
the Admiral. 

Meantime I strolled into the billiard room 
where some English officers were knocking the 
balls about, and at the first table, cue in hand, 
recognized a senior surgeon attached to the 
American Japan Expedition. He was waiting 
the arrival of his Commodore, and had just come 
down from Macao, in the nick of time to answer 



Kumpny's Buttons. I3 

for me ; for though not personally acquainted 
with each other, ray connections and ante- 
cedents were not unknown to him. On hear- 
ing my story he kindty dispatched a handsome 
note to the English Fleet Surgeon, adding to 
mine his own request for an examination. 

At dusk Captain Neblitt returned, bringing 
my appointment to his ship ; the Admiral dis- 
pensed with preliminary forms. Before nine 
o'clock I had reported myself on board and gone 
the sick rounds. After that I returned to the 
town, and climbed the back streets in the moon- 
light alone. 



14 Up and Down the Jrrawaddi. 



CHAPTEE II. 

SINGAPORE — THE MALAYS' VENGEANCE. 

At dawn I rejoined my ship. The men were 
already heaving away at the anchor. 

The Phlegeihon was a small flat-bottomed iron 
steamer of very light draught, carrying two im- 
proved thirty-twos on bull-rings fore and aft, 
two eighteens on a side, and two rocket tubes 
on the bridge— or elevated deck, between the 
paddle-boxes. Her ship's company numbered 
about two hundred, all told, one-fourth of whom 
were Lascars and Malays, employed as stokers 
and coal-trimmers, but good and trusty men, 
(especially the Malays), when their fighting 
qualities were in request. She was admirably 
adapted for any description of service requiring 
vessels of light draught, celerity of movement, 
and facility of management. 

In the subsequent operations in Burmah, she 
was at once tender, pioneer, pilot and messen- 



Singapore. I5 

ger for the larger ships of Her Majesty's and 
the Indian navies, and, as will appear hereafter, 
she, and those she carried, lacked nothing of 
various exciting employment and isolated ad- 
venture. She had already become somewhat 
famous by a brilliant enterprise in the Chinese 
waters, where, in company with the Styx, she 
utterly annihilated a formidable fleet of pirati- 
cal junks, to the lively satisfaction of the for- 
eign merchants of Canton and Hong-Kong, who 
accordingly complimented the two commanders 
with an honorable memorial of plate. As, with 
her long black hull, sharp rake, small paddle- 
boxes, short polished funnel, flush deck, low 
rail, round stern, clean gratings and bright guns, 
she lay in the midst of a fleet of tanka boats, 
touched by the rising sun, she looked remark- 
ably natty. 

After an early breakfast, steam up, and then 
away across the China sea to Singapore. Under 
the awnings, in all the luxury of sleepy skies 
and lazy Eastern airs, we sped past the ugly 
" Asses' Ears," and the Ladrones, infamous for 
cut-throats, and the barren Anambas (what do 
they in that garden?) and the beautiful Bin- 



i6 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

tang, and at the end of a week let go our 
" mud hook" off the tumble-down jetty of Sin- 
gapore. 

Notes of travelers, and journals of officers 
without number, have topographized this place 
for those who must know its height above the 
sea, its thermometrical peculiarities, its soil 
and productions, its manufactures and its 
foreign trade, the extent of the English suburb, 
and the population of the native town, with its 
ethnological characteristics. As for me, I have 
no time to be instructive; in a day or two we 
must be getting away to Penang and onward 
to Burmah. 

There is another class of readers — expressly 
for such careless waifs as I — who would rather 
learn that a Chinese Crispin, in Singapore, made 
me a pair of patent leather shoes outright in six 
hours by himself, and that they fitted me and 
wore well — and that Crispin, that same night, 
was kidnapped by a tigress as he was returning 
from a visit to his sweetheart, somewhere be- 
yond the great grave-yard, and introduced to a 
circle of pups, not as a guest but as a feast. 

Just before our arrival at Singapore, an event 



Malay Vengeance. 17 

of horror had occurred which, better than the 
most elaborate descriptions, serves to show the 
Malay temper, and the need of experience and 
tact in those Europeans (especially ship-mas- 
ters) who employ and venture to manage that 
sensitive, resentful race. 

A British barque sailed, in the middle of 
October, from Hong-Kong for Calcutta, with 
a crew of Malays. She was commanded by 
an Englishman, with English warrant officers. 
The Malays, as is their custom, were under the 
control of a tindal — a sort of boatswain, elected 
from among their own number — next in autho- 
rity to whom was a " second tindal" or boat- 
swain's mate. These tindals exercised absolute 
discretion in respect of the corporal punish- 
ments to be inflicted on their countrymen. 
Blows to a free Malay can be struck only by a 
Malay ; the nature of the offense must be 
stated to the tindal, who measures it by a 
standard subscribed to by his men, and dis- 
penses the corresponding blows, or gagging, or 
confinement in the coal bunkers, or double 
duty, as the case may be. Sometimes the ob- 
durate are treated with mysterious indignities, 



i8 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

the wholesomeness and force of which arc 
appreciated only by themselves. 

Such is the universal organization of Malay 
crews in the Indian seas ; and all Europeans 
must respect it, from Jemmy Ducks, the boy of 
many snubs, through boatswains and mates, up 
to the despot who takes the sun and says 
where she is to-day. The skipper who would 
venture to trice up a Malay and flog him with 
the cats, must be drunk or mad. Nor in con- 
fiding to the tindal the police administration of 
his own department does the "old man" incur 
the slightest risk of lax discipline. Left to 
themselves, the Malays rarely need punishment, 
but when they do, it is laid on with the heavi- 
est hand, and with but little heed to the "regu- 
lations." Tindals stand not on the manner 
of the pounding but pound at once ; and from 
a purely disciplinarian stand-point it is beau- 
tiful to see how patiently, and with what 
trained respect according to the bond, the 
most tiger-like of these fierce fatalists submits 
to the bloody chastisement of his elected officer, 
often a slender youth, a mere stripling, to be 
strangled with a finger and thumb — for the tin- 



Malay Vengeance. 19 

dal is chosen for his activity, intelligence, and 
seamanship, rather than his strength. 

The Captain's wife made her home in the 
brig, and, of course, " worked the ship." A 
hen-pecking, sharp-tempered she-sailor, with 
an unaccountable aversion for Malays — who 
have a sort of indulgent contempt for women, 
and usually content themselves with letting 
them alone — she cowed the skipper and 
"horsed" the crew, letting slip no opportu- 
nity to have them punished for trivial or 
imagined misdemeanors, and in this making 
her husband the instrument of her spite. 

She found an ally in the mate, a dissolute 
fellow of ungovernable passions, often drunk 
and always reckless, who noisily braved the 
revengeful devil in the Malay blood, and 
boasted that " it just took him to bring the 
slippery niggers down to their work." 

There were six Europeans in the crew — an 
English carpenter, the cook, and a small boy, 
his assistant, and three ordinary seamen. 
There was also a lady-passenger, with an infant. 

One morning, a few days out from Hong- 
Kong, when the hatches were off to ventilate 



20 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

the hold, and the men, having just had sapper, 
were smoking and chatting in squads about 
the deck, the second tindal seated himself 
thoughtlessly on the coamings of the main 
hatch with a pipe in his mouth. The act was 
one of unpardonable carelessness, affording a 
dangerous example to the rest, for which he 
richly deserved punishment at the hands of his 
proper officer, and after the manner of Malays ; 
but not as it was administered by the mate, 
who, coming up stealthily behind the man — ■ 
all unconscious of the danger, and, no doubt, 
equally unconscious of his crime — struck him 
a savage blow on the back of the head with a 
belaying-pin, knocking him headlong into the 
hold. The Malay was cruelly hurt, and being 
lifted out by his companions, was carried for- 
ward insensible. 

The affair produced, at the time, no visible 
excitement among the Malays : they went 
about their work as usual, betraying no more 
than a natural anxiety for the life of their 
officer, relieving each other in attendance upon 
him, and employing all their rude arts to heal 
his wounds. 



Malay Vengeance. 21 

The vessel lay for some days becalmed, and 
in that time the injured man was sufficiently 
recovered to come on deck in the evening and 
sit forward with his friends. It was afterward 
recollected and emphasized by the carpenter 
and the cook's boy, that from the hour in 
which the second tindal reappeared on deck, 
" the watch below" never wholly " turned in," 
but gathered in knots about the forecastle, 
conversing with animation, and sometimes 
even with undisguised excitement, in a tongue 
unknown to the carpenter, who had a slight 
knowledge of both the Malay and Bengalee 
languages. 

At last, when they were within a day's sail 
of Singapore, as the Captain sat near the bin- 
nacle in the moonlight, smoking, with his feet 
on the stern rail, and his back, of course, to his 
crew, the Malays, armed with knives and axes, 
came aft with their tindal at their head — all 
together, but so quietly that their approach 
was unheard by the skipper, who was some- 
what deaf, and their dreadful purpose unsus- 
pected by the carpenter and the boy, who 
were the only Europeans on deck. They 



22 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

mounted the poop-deck and stood close behind 
the skipper. 

With downright, steady brunt, the tindal 
buried the butt of his axe in the old man's brains, 
and while his astonished eyes still stared, they 
tossed him over, shivering, to the sharks. 

Then the tiger in the temper of each man of 
them sprang forward w T ith a roar. The mate, 
with the two women, still lingered over the 
supper-table in the cabin, when these wild 
beasts, fairly foaming, burst in upon them. The 
man was brave as well as brutal, and snatch- 
ing a cutlass from the rack between the stern 
ports, as the women fled into a state-room, he 
stood at bay, his back against the door. But 
the tindal, lithe as a cat, and careless of the 
weapon as though he had as many lives, slip- 
ped under the blade before the mate had gath- 
ered his wits together, and, with teeth and 
nails, fastened on his throat. In a moment, a 
dozen others had grasped his sword-arm and 
twisted it out of the socket. Then they drag- 
ged him, cursing and biting, on deck and slung 
him in the rigging and set the second tindal, 
the avenger, at him. 



Malay Vengeance. 23 

With barely strength enough to handle his 
sheath-knife, the Malay clung to his prey, 
gloatingly, jealously, restlessly, like a famished 
wild-cat over a reeking morsel, dissecting him 
piece-meal and daintily, with many a horrid 
interlude and obscene intercalation, down to 
the heart, while the other fiends were playing 
out their parts. 

With damnable mirth they dragged their 
foolish enemy, the skipper's shrew, half dead 
already, from her hiding-place. A little while, 
and bruised by "pioneers and all," and gro- 
tesquely mutilated, she was flung into one of the 
boats hanging at the davits. 

The lady-passenger and her babe were 
as yet unharmed; with even a degree of 
care they were placed in the boat along with 
the still gasping remains of the skipper's 
wife. It was believed by the carpenter, and 
afterward so declared by several of the Malays, 
that they did not mean to kill or hurt the 
lady, but only to set her adrift in the boat with 
her dying sister, to be picked up by some junk 
or European craft, in the track from Singapore 
to Hong-Kong. But even as they were in the 



24 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

act of "lowering away," the second tindal, 
drunk with blood, left his carcass, and rushing 
in among them with his knife, cut away the 
after fall, and so, the stern dropping with a 
jerk, threw the three wretches into the sea, 
and mother and babe, with that horrid thing, 
went down among the sharks. 

They had dispatched, in the beginning, the 
four European seamen. The boy had hidden 
himself and was forgotten. The carpenter had 
been ever a favorite with them, so they merely 
bound him down to the deck between some 
ring-bolts, leaving him to be picked up by any 
passing craft. Then inverting the ensign to 
attract attention, they took to the boats, and 
made straight for Singapore, where they gave 
themselves up, being the first to tell their 
own horrid story. And they told it truly, 
looking to be admired for the fidelity with 
which they had done their law upon those 
who, spite of many a warning, had set it at 
defiance. 

They were told they would be hung, and 
they were hung, but they laughed at that to 
the last. Your Malay is your only sincere. 



Malay Vengeance. 25 

practical fatalist; death is a matter about 
which he never "fashes" himself. 

The boy came out from his concealment when 
they had gone, and released the carpenter, and 
at dawn the two hailed a passing vessel, which 
took them off and carried them into Singapore, 
When we arrived, the Malays had been sent on 
to Penang for trial and execution— all except 
two, who were shipped with us to follow the 
others. 



26 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER ill. 

THE STEAITS OF MALACCA — A TAME MYTH. 

OVEE THE SIDE. 

Maiden, look over the side with me, 
And what do thine eyes discern ? 
" Only some gulf-weed under the bow, 
And a petrel under the stern. 

Si And deep, deep down, where the depths are dark, 
I can see a dolphin shoot, 
Round and round in a rainbow ring, 
And a shark in fierce pursuit. 

" But what to me may the gulf-weed be ? 
Or what is a petrel worth ? 
And what should the dolphin share, or the shark, 
Of the pity or hate of earth ?" 

A busy thought for an idle mind, 

And a care for a heedless heart, 
May the weed or the silly petrel lend, 

Or the chase of the fish impart. 

Delicate berries the gulf-weed bears, 

Bountiful, ripe, and red, 
That never peep'd from a cotter's hedge, 

Or bloomed by a shepherd's shed. 

Nor ever a place hath the gulf-weed found 

On the lap of the matron Earth, 
To be part of a rosy truant's prize, 

Or the crown of his Christmas mirth. 



The Straits of Malacca. 27 

Never a home hath the gulf- weed known, 

Nor a clasp of the friendly land ; 
But, rootless and drifting, wearily bears 

Its berries from strand to strand. 

Yet, like a branch from a cottage vine, 

Flung on the open sea, 
It telleth of rest to the weary waves, 

And of home to thee and me. 

Light as the petrel's footsteps are, 

They slip on the sliddery sea ; 
Quick though her wings as a winking star, 

They struggle heavily. 

And piteously the brine drips down, 

From her breast to the crouching wave,—* 

Alas, if so fierce a foe should fall 
On a thing so slight and brave ! 

Far from the rest of her native nest, 

And the joys of a sea-bird's home, 
She follows the billow whose doom is her's. 

To roam — and roam — and roam. 

Breasting the brunt of the charging gale, 

Her's is a hero's part, 
Strength in the stroke of her slender wings, 

And hope in her panting heart. 

So the petrel under the stern may teach 

A wholesome homily — 
Of courage and trust for a fate forlorn, 

And of patience to thee and me. 

Swift as the glance of a witch's eye, 

In a glory of gold and blue, 
With a changing wake like the sheen of a blade, 

The dolphin flashes through. 



28 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

Implacable as Nemesis, 

The type of a Godless mind, 
That fall-armed heathen of the seas, 

The shark, comes up behind ! 

'Tis a vision of love in a bounding heart, 

Pursued by a ruthless hate ; 
Turn from the side with thy silly tears, 

And leave the chase to fate. 



Did you ever catch a myth and tame it ? If 
not (because your Wall-street brother counted 
his 6ngers and pooh-poohed you), wait till you 
sail through the Straits of Malacca in November ; 
then bait a line of fine fancy with a thought of 
perfect faith, and take a mermaid. 

Mine was of the loveliest and most syrene. 
She came not of the race of Hans Christian 
Andersen's little one — who parted with her 
tuneful blandishments of voice in order that a 
pair of " the neatest white legs that a maiden 
could desire" might grow out where her tail 
used to be ; for as we cut the pale blue water 
in furrows of silver stars, she chased the shadow 
of our flying keel across the fields of coral, sing- 
ing to me by moonlight the song her trans- 
lucent fore-mother sang for Ulysses. 

She brought me pearls, the purest that mer- 



A Tame Myth. 29 

urchins pelt. She whistled up the parrot-fishes, 
to show me their crimson-silver plumage. She 
flushed me a flock of gurnards, to flutter their 
Psyche winglets. She strewed the sea-field for 
acres with the fragile violet janthine; and 
fleets of her Portuguese men-of-war, with hulls 
as blue as her own eyes and sails as pink as her 
lips, rode down over the long swell, to give 
battle to saucy Sallee-men. She showed me 
how her sharp-shooting chaetodons could bring 
down sea-flies with swift drops of water. 
She brought me branches of home-sickening 
sargassum— the holly that told of sea-cattle, 
and the yew-sprays from billowy graves. 

Under the boughs of areca, in among islands 
of dream, I spied, where she pointed, the reedy 
booms, and buoyant out-riggers of free-booting 
proas lurking in cunning coves. And when at 
last the breeze of sherbet came over the groves 
of Penang, she showed me the Hebes of air, how 
they sprinkled the draught with nutmeg. 



30 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PENANG RUNNING AMOK. 

Penang! — Paradise and Peridom attainable 
by steam ! And yet, for all its pools of silver, 
and its bowers of balm and beauty, and its 
bird-bells tinkling tunefully, and its orchards of 
Araboid aromas, and its drowsy palms nodding 
tipsily over brimmers of spiced ether, and its 
bamboos rippling where long shadows sail, that 
Eden also hath its fiend. 

While we were there, a Malay ran amok. The 
fellow — a familiar vagabond who hung about 
the skirts of the town — had been bambooed for 
a theft. Next morning, even as the golden sun 
began to glorify the garden, he snatched his 
wicked krees, and with black locks streaming 
in the astonished air, and back and loins bare 
and slippery with palm oil, with staring eyes, 
and visage all-bedeviled, crazed with shame and 
spite, and drunk with opium, he reeled like a mad 
dog. down the thronged lanes between the bam- 



Running Amok. 3I 

boo hedges, where blind old men, unwitting of 
the horror, crept from hut to hut, and maidens 
came singing from the groves with great plan- 
tain clusters on their heads, and shiny brown 
youngsters ran races for cocoa-nuts. He rushed 
through flying men shouting for their weapons, 
and women screaming to Guadma and Boodh, 
and children laughing at the funny man— stab- 
bing and chopping and slashing, and spattering 
the bamboos with blood ; till at last, down, 
and wriggling in a fit, he was dispatched, and his 
steeple-chase of death was run. 

Pardon ! I relate these things in course. No 
more than my reader have I a taste for horrors ; 
but in those lands, where spiced sauces are 
everything, they do not serve these separate, 
and you must take them chow-chow with your 
music and loveliness and love— all or none. 

Next morning we lifted the anchor and, under 
" full power," sped away to Burmah— for coals 
and water, so they said — the kidnappers ! to 
serve me so, a poor Yankee waif ! 

Passing the scare-crow Andamans, content 
to take their injured look for granted and be- 
lieve them innocent of cannibals, in a few days 



op. Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

we ran up to the custom-house wharf of Moul- 
mein, so suddenly that an elephant took fright 
at us, and ran away with a field-piece. 
• Our coming had been looked for, for many 
days. Rumors of war, between the East India 
Company and the Burmese nation, were agitat- 
ing the motley community of Moulmein and 
lending to the advent of the PhlegetJum more 
than her share of interest. Already a British 
Commodore, with a frigate and a Company's 
steamer, was at Rangoon. 

In fact, in less than six weeks our guns were 
" conciliating" Burmah ; and as it is my own 
story, and not the history of a war of annexa- 
tion, that I have set out to write, I have gather- 
ed from this Burmese campaign — wherein I was 
a volunteer in spite of myself — a few passages 
of personal adventure which, here and there 
in the progress of my rambling story, will turn 
up for the entertainment of my reader. For 
the rest — the policy, the diplomacy, and " all 
that sort of thing" — I shall hand him over to 
Cobden and Ellenborough, with one introduc- 
tory chapter, more free than flattering : — and 
then go ashore. 



What we were going to Fight about. 33 



CHAPTER V. 

WHAT WE WERE GOING TO FIGHT ABOUT. 

In 1826, at the close of a vexatious, and, as 
it finally appeared, most unprofitable, war, pro- 
voked by the repeated encroachments upon the 
territory of the East India Company, of organ- 
ized Burmese marauders, encouraged by their 
government, the British-Indian Administration 
succeeded in concluding a treaty with that 
nation, by which certain commercial advan- 
tages were assured to the Company's people 
established in, or statedly voyaging to Burmah. 
Even this, however, was not procured without 
great cost in money and men — the latter " ex- 
pended" in the way of cholera, low fevers, and 
sun-stroke — nor until the British force had 
penetrated through stupendous difficulties into 
the heart of the country, and almost to the 
gates of her capital. 

It was then conceded by the " Golden Foot," 

2* 



34 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

as the arch-savage of that kingdom is styled, 
that a British resident should be received and 
respected at Ava, and that British subjects 
should be admitted to the intercourse of trade, 
under certain restrictions, and protected in 
certain commercial enterprises in Burmah, 
the nature and extent of which were, then and 
there, jealously and severely prescribed. 

From that time till the close of 1851, a few 
traders from Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Moul- 
mein, Singapore, and even Hong-Kong — all 
British subjects, under the protection of the 
Honorable Comj)any, whether native-born, 
half-caste, Parsees, Armenians, or Chittagonians 
— attempted, with various fortune, the estab- 
lishment of a safe and regular commerce with 
those difficult people. A great variety of arti- 
cles of British or British-Indian manufacture, 
not excepting arms, were conveyed thither to 
be exchanged for cutch, lacquered ware, raw 
cotton, petroleum, bell-metal, and rubies — 
silver, which, from the commonness of its 
display in a crude form among the bazaar people 
of Martaban, Rangoon, and Prome, would seem 
to abouud, being confined in the country by 



What we were going to Fight about. 35 

the severest penalties imposed on its exporta- 
tion, and enforced even unto death : so, also, 
with the hen fowls, cow elephants, native 
mares, women, and the female of every kind. 

And thus, on less than sufferance, but with 
notable patience and pertinacity, the Com- 
pany's people continued to proffer their wares 
in the name of the Governor-G-eneral — a name 
which they hoped would prove their tower of 
strength. Eelying on that talisman, the ad- 
venturous woodsmen, season after season, traced 
untried streams to their sources, and dared the 
almost impenetrable jungle, alive with terrors, 
to bring, with elephants and rafts, their mam- 
moth logs of teak down to Eangoon and the 
ship-yards below Mouimein — which latter place, 
by-the-by, is a British military post, wrested 
from Burmah, with the Tenasserim province to 
which it belongs, by Sir Archibald Campbell, 
in 1524-25, and a Company's commissioner 
has constantly resided there, his acts supported 
by one British and two Sepoy regiments. 

But these men, instructed though they were 
in the ways of the country, alive to the pre- 
carious tenure of their footing there, and to all 



36 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

the peculiar perils of their position, long used 
to contend with Burmese insolence and craft, 
and not seldom to defeat and punish both, were 
finally fain to succumb. The most arbitrary 
confiscation of their goods by every petty 
Woon who flourished one gold umbrella — at 
best no better than a promoted dacoit or free- 
booter ; the most wanton destruction of their 
boats and houses ; the most atrocious cruelties 
practiced upon their persons, in not a few 
instances extending to their wives and children : 
these were difficulties too great for a handful 
of adventurers, unsustained by the presence of 
a single ship of war, to struggle with success- 
fully. They frequently applied to the govern- 
ment at Calcutta for aid. 

Wherefore, toward the close of 1851, Com- 
modore Lambert entered the harbor of Rangoon 
with H. M. frigate Fox and the Company's war- 
steamer Tenasserim, as tender, and dropped an- 
chor off the Governor's house. Then began a 
course of empirical diplomacy unusual in civil- 
ized practice ; crimination and recrimination ; 
mutual interchanges of threats and blandish- 
ments, of curses and compliments, of contempt 



What we were going to Fight about. 37 

and cajolery. To-day the Commodore and the 
Woon dined together lovingly, and their respec- 
tive subordinates pleasantly reciprocated hospi- 
talities ; to-morrow all were in arms, and with 
much beating of side- drums and banging of 
gongs, defying each other. 

And all this while the original sufferers, with 
an exemplary exhibition of the largest faith, 
were waiting — waiting for Commodore Lambert 
to make up his mind whether his heathen friend 
was the most atrocious cut-throat or just the 
best fellow in the world — waiting in some in- 
stances with their limbs in fetters, in all with 
their losses unrepaired, their insults unre- 
dressed. 

Especially had our American missionaries, 
laboring in the field of Judson, tasted of the 
cruelty with which all alike had been enter- 
tained, and the brave and admirable Kincaid 
can this day bear witness, even with' scars, to 
the success of the foreign policy of Burmah. 

It is but just to Commodore Lambert, and 
to Admiral Austin, who superseded him in 
the command and died shortly afterward, 
to say that in their later demands on the Bur- 



38 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

mese authorities, so vigorously enforced, they 
imperatively included safety and respect for 
our missionary countrymen, and most kindly 
represented this government in their behalf. 

Meantime, the old Governor of Dallah, on the 
other side of the riven- over against Rangoon, 
who had all the time boon professing the live- 
liest affection lor Englishmen in general and the 
Commodore in particular, volunteered to send 
a letter from that officer to the King at Ava, and 
promised that a satisfactory answer should be 
returned after a reasonable interval. 

This amiable old gentleman did not hesitate 
to communicate confidentially to the Commo- 
dore his private impressions touching the pro- 
ceedings of his Rangoon brother, and honestly 
conceded that that exalted YVoon was no better 
than he should be. Moreover, he assured the 
Commodore that in case recourse should be had 
to guns, his feelings would be with the English ; 
and although, for his head's sake, he should in 
that event be constrained to make some show 
of tight, it would be all in friendly sport and 
according to the " we-understand-each-other" 
tactics, his shots flving wide of the mark — a 



What we were going to Fight about. 39 

tenderness which, of course, his British friends 
would be expected to reciprocate. 

So the letter was sent ; and, after a protract- 
ed interval, marked by some ominous expres- 
sions of impatience on the part of the Commo- 
dore, an answer came, brought by many high- 
and-mighties mounted on many elephants : 
" Indemnity for the past, and security for 
the future," should be forthcoming immedi- 
ately; His Majesty would not have withheld 
them a moment— but he had been studiously 
kept in ignorance of the facts ; as for that 
reprobate at Rangoon, he should be forthwith 
recalled in disgrace and a more splendid per- 
sonage, Yary kindly affected toward the English, 
should be sent from the capital to supersede him. 

All this was, of course, highly flattering ; and 
the Commodore gallantly expressed his satis- 
faction by withdrawing to Moulmein, after duly 
saluting the "Sacred Goose." 

Not before several months had elapsed, did 
the truth transpire — that the old governor of 
Rangoon had been recalled to Ava, but only to 
be decorated with more umbrellas, and promoted 
to a higher seat in the kingdom ; and as for the 



40 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

new one, compared with him, his predecessor 
was a blessing. More British subjects had been 
put in the stocks and fined, more ships and 
houses confiscated on pretense of containing 
hidden silver ; Rangoon and Dalian had been 
strongly fortified with extensive stockades ; 
abundance of ammunition and stores had been 
collected, and a large army mustered. 

Then the British commander first learned 
with whom he had to deal. 

His story was laid before the Governor- 
General ; thirteen first-class war steamers and 
seventeen transports, conveying nine thousand 
men, were sent to Rangoon ; and, shortly after- 
ward, Martaban, Rangoon, Kemmendine, Bas- 
sein, Yangeenchinyah, Doonoobyoo, Pontalong, 
and Prome were taken, and the beautiful and 
productive plains of Pegu — preparatory to their 
annexation by the British-Indian government — 
secured to their oppressed and inoffensive dwell- 
ers. Early in the bombardment of Rangoon, 
the vigor, earnestness, and precision of the 
Dallah guns, convinced the Commodore that he 
had been mistaken in his respectable and vener- 
able friend. 



The Ghaut at Moulmein. 41 



CHAPTER YI. 

THE GHAUT AT MOULMEIN — PALKEE-GARPvEES — STEAM VS. ELE- 
PHANT. 

As we approached Moulmein, the pleased 
expression on the faces of the officers, the ur- 
banity of the " skipper," and the alacrity with 
which the men went about their work, all told 
plainly enough that oar lines were about to 
fall in pleasant places. " Grog and girls" 
was legible enough on Jack's weather-beaten 
phiz, and mess-dinners, pic-nics, and elephant 
excursions, could be read under every gold 
band. 

Under the barn-like shed of the wharf, and 
on both sides of the way approaching it, were 
palkee-garrees, propelled by tough, brown, bob- 
maned ponies, with a will of their own; 
rude ugly carts, on thick wooden wheels of a 
somewhat square pattern, drawn by docile 
oxen, all of them white, and very willing little 
fellows ; in the distance an elephant or two, 



42 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

flapping their great ears like topsails in a 
calm, and switching their monstrous india-rub- 
ber sides with branches of some way-side shrub, 
to keep the flies off. Threading the parti- 
colored crowd with an oscillating motion, its 
bearers, with outside elbows sharply crooked 
and calves all varicose, yelping as they trotted; 
was, here and there, a long black palkee — the 
palankeen of Bengal, with its red curtains 
and its bobbing pole. 

Along the wide yellow road that stretches 
over the hill, and sweeps around the back of the 
town to the cantonments, was gathered a pic- 
turesque throng, impelled by a curiosity as 
various as their races and temperaments : high- 
ly genteel and uncomfortable Englishmen- 
civil servants of the Company ; premature en- 
signs from the cantonments, with marvel o.usly 
thin legs and a used-up yawn, very tight as to 
the seat of their trowsers, and loose as to their 
gills and their language; Her Majesty's Com- 
missioner, perhaps, attended by some general 
officers — all with clean shirts and immense airs ; 
two or three American missionaries — very busy, 
very awkward, very modest, very sensible — the 



The Ghaut at Moulmein. 43 

only people there who seem really tc know 
why they are there, and what is going on ; a 
few fair daughters of the regiment, perched in 
pony phaetons, or swinging in palkees ; fat, 
placid Parsees, with tall, black, stove-pipe hats, 
long black mantles, abundant black beards, pro- 
found black eyes, and an imperturbable demean- 
or ; servile six-penny chee-chees (half-castes), at 
once deprecatory and dogmatical, extravagant 
in their protestations of respect and proffers of 
service, and disgracefully cheap in their gar- 
ments and their souls — fellows who speak prig- 
gish English, of a parody sort, and whom 
nobody kicks, only because, with their close 
version of the proprieties, there's no room to 
get a kick in — or, if there were, deducting from 
the sum of satisfaction the specified pecuniary 
damages, it wouldn't pay ; Armenians, a sort 
of oriental Stigginses, especially interesting for 
their possession of certain lovely " wessels" at 
home, and the absence of anything attractive 
in themselves, by which to account for it ; 
Jews, the same in Cossitollah as in Chatham 
street — only that, in the former latitude, their 
manners have somewhat more of the Shekinah 



44 Up an d Down the Irrawaddi. 

and less of " der masheen"; Chinese, cunning, 
cosmopolite, comfortable ; Malays, clannish, 
jealous, exacting consideration ; Bengalees, 
vociferou-s and importunate, acquainted with 
blows and rather liking them, bora slaves and 
scamps and dodging nuisances ; Burmese, by- 
standing, unprotesting, bothered altogether. 

All Moulmein was on the qui vive. Presently 
came baskets of plantains and melons, with now 
and then the first dorians or mangoes of the 
season, for a lucky dog of a messmate, from 
some adjutant's sister or commissary's cousin. 
Next, all the intricacies of a long-shore toilet 
were to be woven from a sailor's simple kit, amid 
much anathematizing of Hindoo barbers and 
" boys," who deserved nothing better, for that 
day at least, than epithets ingeniously contrived 
to insult their religious prejudices. Then fre- 
quent and modest petitions at the captain's 
door — "Permission to go ashore, sir?" — that 
gentleman, himself most eager for the fun, pre- 
serving an attitude of dignified indifference 
to such puerile excitements. Last of all came 
the hurry and confusion, and noisy contention 
in a babel of dialects, of " shore-boats along- 



The Ghaut at Moulmein. 45 

side, sir," reported by the quarter-master, and 
followed by a variety of novel experiments — 
often attended by most ludicrous mishaps, to the 
great glee of the dinghee-wallahs — to balance 
ourselves in their tipsy canoes : — The cautious 
men, especially " old stagers," tenderly pre- 
served the boat's and their own centre of gravi- 
ty by humbly squatting in the bottom ; the 
rash, especially the greenhorns, insisted upon 
standing erect and " striking an attitude," until 
a ducking, fatal to all their pretty arangements, 
explained the futility of the effort. 

And so we reach the ghaut — or rather the 
mud, when the tide is low — through which we 
are borne, baby-like, in the arms of the bearers. 
The dinghee-wallahs being paid — not without 
much exhortation to our generosity on their 
part, and some striking arguments, addressed 
to their extortion, on ours — we switch our 
way through the motley crew, diverse as Jo- 
seph's coat, to satisfy the curiosity of patient 
friends and receive their congratulatory greet- 
ings. 

Conveyances must be provided for our ex- 
cursion. The " fast man," with an eye to speed 



46 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

and all a sailor's fondness for a drive, selects a 
garree; the " old Indian," habituated to luxury 
and laziness, prefers a palkee. This last is an 
oblong box, three feet high, three feet wide, 
and six feet long, paneled and varnished like 
the body of a carriage, provided with sliding 
doors and curtains on both sides, and a small 
window in each end, and, by means of a stout 
pole at either extremity, parallel to its longi- 
tudinal axis, borne on the shoulders of four 
stout bearers. Within, it is furnished with a 
light mattress of some fine sort of straw, and a 
pillow of cane or paper, beside a small shelf 
and drawer to hold books and parcels. In this 
the passenger indolently extends his full length, 
and, in agreeable privacy, smokes, or reads, or 
sleeps, as he travels. 

The palkee-wallahs, as the bearers are called, 
are naked to the waist, save in the rainy season. 
Their loins are girt up in an ample breech-cloth 
of white linen, and a turban of the same mate- 
rial protects the head, having one end long and 
pendent, which, taking a turn around the 
neck, falls over the free shoulder ; their legs and 
feet are uncovered. 



Palkees. 47 

These palkees, which, to an inexperienced 
person, offer, even when empty, a hopeless 
weight, are conveyed by them, with a heavy 
passenger within, at the rate of twenty or thirty 
miles a day, with but slight distress. Their 
mode of travel is a short trot, having the 
free elbow sharply crooked, and marking time 
with a strange monotonous refrain. To a 
stranger, this is at first an unpleasant mode of 
excursion, owing to the almost painful sympa- 
thy it excites in behalf of the struggling bear- 
ers ; but that weakness is soon lost in the pro- 
cess of acclimation. 

In Calcutta, the palkee is a popular vehicle 
of flirtation, for which purpose it is suc- 
cessfully employed. In the most crowded 
thoroughfares it is not uncommon to meet 
what appears to be a double palkee, with 
eight bearers, and the doors closed. The ar- 
rangement is simple, but ingenious, and de- 
lightfully convenient. Two single palkees are 
brought side by side — one, of course, contains a 
lady, the other, a gentleman; the outer doors 
are closed, the inner open ; the vehicles are in 
the closest juxtaposition ; the same monotonous 



48 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

ditty (which, for once, may be an extemporane- 
ous love-song) serves for the sixteen feet. Hin- 
doos are never intrusive or inquisitive when they 
can afford to abstain; and so two innocent peo- 
ple recline within an inch and a half of each 
other, and, threading crowded bazaars, pour 
soft nothings into each others ears in all the 
sacred seclusion of a harem. It is pleasant to 
travel thus. 

The garree is a small, close carriage, resem- 
bling those in use by physicians in this country. 
It is mounted on low wheels, and seats four 
persons not uncomfortably. Many of them 
are neat, and no hackney vehicles can be more 
convenient. They are drawn by small Burmese 
ponies— tough, sure-footed, quick beasts, with 
endless " bottom." The driver, who is attired 
in the costume of the palkee-wallahs is never 
seated, but runs beside his horse, whatever the 
distance. There is nothing especially notice- 
able about him, except his varicose veins, of 
which he is proud, and his long wind, of which 
he is prouder. 

On the present occasion, one of these latter 
gentry seized me and my companion and thrust 



Steam vs. Elephant. 49 

us bodily into his box. As we rode past the 
timber-yards we stopped to regard an elephant 
who was hauling huge logs of teak, cut for 
spars and ribs, from one end of the yard to the 
other, where he piled them. The ends of a stout 
chain cable, girdled about his burly body, were 
made fast to the end of a log, and at the word 
from his driver, who, perched upon his neck, 
was digging into his skull with an iron-shod 
stick shaped like a boat-hook, he dragged 
it leisurely to the spot indicated. There the 
chain was unhooked, and once more, by com- 
mand of the brute on his head, he raised the 
huge beam cautiously, one end at a time, and 
deposited it in its place, the lazy coolies mean- 
while sitting down to rest. Wise and gentle 
and forbearing beast ! 

" How kind it was of him, 

To mind such slender men as they — 
He of the mighty limb !" 

His must have been the soul, and he more 
worthy of the saving offices of a missionary 
than his stolid masters. 

While he thus pursued his ponderous toil, 
the Phlegethon, near by, let off steam, and 



50 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

the shrill, foreign scream reached his gutta- 
percha ears. He paused in his task, and 
listened for a moment, all amazed. Then, 
raising his trunk aloft, he uttered an ex- 
clamation of astonishment, like the Indian 
"ugh!" Anon he turned his brisk little eyes 
about, seeming to seek some Daniel who could 
interpret the warning to his dismayed soul ; for 
it was a warning, of heavy import to him and 
all his free fellows in the jungle, and I could 
have prayed for the gift of tongues, that I 
might speak elephant to him, and tell him, in 
accents forlorner than Cassandra's, all the dark 
prophecy of steam and telegraphs, of desolation 
in his rice fields, and menial offices imposed 
upon his calves. 

Presently he resumed his task, no longer 
with his wonted deliberateness and self-posses- 
sion, but with a strange agitation in his soul, 
and wild eyes, big with speculation. 



Moul 



mem. 



?l 



CHAPTER VII. 

MOULMEIN TOWN AND CANTONMENTS. 

Moulmein is a picturesque place ; but so are 
all Burmese villages, and in their prominent 
features they are all alike. Select an easy, 
rolling slope, with knolls and tangled thickets, 
gently declining from a range of heavily-tim- 
bered hills. Flank it on either side with 
interminable jungle, affording secure cover for 
the various forest life. In front of all, train a 
wide, rapid, darkly-discolored stream, abun- 
dantly stocked with alligators, water-oxen, and 
other such fishy game ; and fill up your back- 
ground with teak-forests and remote moun- 
tains, with here and there some paddy-fields 
between, which shall pasture your wild 
elephants. Cover your ground with creep- 
ers, cactuses, canes, and various tropical 
vegetation in a wilderness of profusion. In 
among these, plant your native bamboo huts 
as thickly as you can, and with picturesque 



5*2 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

freedom of arrangement ; for you will remem- 
ber that you are in Burmah, not in America or 
England, consequently you will fit your house 
to your trees, not your park to your mansion, 
save that, with an eye to future tiffins, you 
will contrive to secure the convenient proximi- 
ty of some indispensable plantains and man- 
goes. 

You will require three streets : one, which 
shall be the street of shops, running through 
the heart of the town in the direction of its 
length. In the busiest part of this thorough- 
fare you will require some more substantial 
structures, built of a sort of half-burnt brick, 
and occupied by Jew and Armenian shop- 
keepers, who traffic in everything and stick at 
nothing. 

Dark and secret are the domestic quarters 
of these dens, suggesting Turkish shadows of 
eunuchs and sacks and bow-strings ; though 
once in a while the low giggle of some hidden 
Hagar of seventeen drops into the stranger's 
ear from between the jealous bars of her lat- 
tice, or he catches a glimpse of the heavenly 
profile of some half-caste Armenian maiden, 



Town and Cantonments. 53 

(such an one was Mindakeen !) as she lights 
her father's hubble-bubble in the back-shop. 

Your second street in importance will be 
the street of ghauts, extending from the canton- 
ments to the custom-house wharf; and your 
last will penetrate the cantonments themselves. 

In a new American settlement, the public 
building first erected is always the land-office. 
In Burmah (at an English military post) it is 
first an American Baptist school-house, which, 
American-like, looks to a succession of im- 
provements, and consequently is flimsily con- 
structed of bamboos, differing from the native 
houses only in its dimensions. The second 
is the Company's custom-house, which, British- 
like, is a fixed, irrevocable fact, not to be 
reconsidered ; consequently it is a substantial 
structure of bricks and stucco from the begin- 
ning. 

For public buildings, and places of popular 
resort, you have the cantonments and barracks, 
where, if your tastes are military, you can in- 
spect some thousands of red-coated sepoys, 
and every morning at the sunrise-gun see from 
three to five regiments severely drilled. If 



54 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

your tendencies are religious, you have the 
English church, and the Catholic chapel, and 
the Baptist meeting-house. If your tastes are 
mechanical, you have the timber-yards and the 
docks, and perhaps a ship-yard. If they are 
zoological, there are stuffed tigers in the bar- 
racks, and the elephant who is toting grass for 
the artillery stables will pick up a cigar, or 
make salaam for you, for a plantain or two. 
Besides, there is a live alligator in the school 
tank, and the superintending surgeon stuffs 
birds and impales butterflies. You may visit 
the old poonghee houses and see the idols; or 
attend parade on Wednesday and Friday after- 
noons to hear opera airs from the " 18th Boyal 
Irish," or some other regimental band, and idol- 
ize the girls. 

For your morning calls, you have the 
wives, and sisters, and daughters, and cousins 
of the British-Indian army, with an occa- 
sional she- ad venturer who is on tolerance 
in society, and the most agreeable person 
in it, so long as you pay her sufficient at- 
tention and do not inquire who her father 
was, which would imply that she is a wiser 



Town and Cantonments. £J 

child than you will find her. For amusements 
you have public mess-days, dinners at the Com- 
missioner's, an occasional ball or so, some pri- 
vate theatricals, tableaux means ^ charades, &c, 

plenty of soirees, and >; tea at the Mission. ;! 
Then there are elephant excursions to ;; the 
Caves," (which are not wholly incidentless, 
and shall be minutely described soon,) and an 
abundance of pic-nics, which are like other 
pic-nics all the world over, save that you ride 
to them on elephants and take guns to keep 
off the tigers. 

Now, to complete your Burmese village : on 
- ery hill-top. on every lofty peak that over- 
looks the town, let a small white pagoda be 
seen, perched like some beautiful but lonely 
bird. Crown each of these delicate aerial edi- 
fices with a coronet of tiny gilded bells, which 
shall utter the mellowest music to every pass- 
ing breeze and salute with silver tinklings the 
fragrant incense which ascends to visit them 
from many a lotos-laden lake and plantain- 
grove. 

And so you have Moulmein, where one be- 
holds in the fullness of its grace and beauty 



56 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

that most superb of Chin-India's flowering 
trees, named for a vice-royal dame worthy to 
be its patron, the Noble Amherstia. On every 
hand its crown of lively green is seen, and its 
rustling skirts hang low, fringed and corded 
and tassel ed in green and gold and crimson. 



Elephant-Back. 57 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ELEPHANT-BACK " OLD INJIN-RUBBER" THE BOA THE 

CAVES GUADMA THE BATS. 

Shortly after our arrival at Moulmein, an ex- 
cursion to " The Caves," some twelve miles to 
the north of the town, was planned by several 
English officers and resident merchants, and an 
invitation extended to our gun-room mess. Ac- 
cordingly, garrees were bespoken, boats engaged 
to await us at the ferry, and elephants on the 
other side, to roll us to our destination ; kit- 
mudgars and bearers were sent on before with 
hampers, teeming with tongues, anchovies, 
sardines, chutney, eggs, and curry, together 
with the table furniture, and all the machinery 
of a pic-nic. And so, with the cheroots, and the 
" brandy-pawnee," and the soda-water, and the 
beer, we set out, after an early breakfast of 
fruit and coffee, in our low, square garrees, drawn 
by the same brown, bob-maned, opinionated 

ponies, each with his proper gora-wallah — 

3* 



58 Up and Down the Irrawaddi.. 

nude and sweaty, and shiny accordingly, and 
long-winded and varicose- — running at his 
head. 

After an hour of rattling through straight 
and narrow streets, between green ditches and 
smoky bamboo huts— the latter extremely ram- 
shackle, and redolent of petroleum, ghee, and 
putrid fish — running over pariah dogs, and 
throwing naked brown brats into convulsions 
of glee, while their fathers and mothers squat- 
ted, and giggled, and smoked great green cigars, 
in their cane porches — we came, at last, to the 
river. Here, alighting from the garrees, we 
transferred ourselves and the " plunder" to 
ticklish canoes, and were paddled across the 
sluggish stream, thinking of crocodiles and hip- 
popotami, to a bunch of tumble-clown- sheds in 
a bower of urchin banians, where some Bur- 
mese loafers, who were squatting as we ap- 
proached, in knots of three or four, rising to 
the perpendicular when our boats stuck, a 
score of yards from the bank, ran down to bear 
us over the black mud on their backs. 

A few rods up the road, five elephants, sub- 
stantial monsters, stood flapping their cape- 



Elephant-Back. 59 

like ears, and pendulating their short, ridiculous 
tails — which, by-the-by, the greenest of us re- 
garded as very superfluous appendages, as use- 
less as unornamental, until, fording a stream in 
the course of our excursion, we perceived the 
very gentlemanly use to which the gutta-percha 
philosopher in front of us put his. They 
twinkled their bright, little, black eyes, that 
were like polished horn buttons on an india- 
rubber over-coat, and fly-brushed themselves 
with whisps of paddy straw, featly flourished 
with their trunks. 

Seeing an elephant in a menagerie, may na- 
turally be attended with sensations more or 
less flattering to the spectator, in view of the 
" admittance, 25 cents" — he is conscious of 
patronizing Behemoth. But to stand under a 
roadside precipice of animated india-rubber, 
having already (being a green tourist to that 
spot) foolishly made grand flourishes of your 
intention to ascend without assistance, is to 
look up at Peter Botte, and suddenly recollect 
that you have left your windlass and rope-lad- 
der at home ; you are reduced, with ridiculous 
abruptness, to a sense of your situation — a con- 



60 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

fession of your own insignificance, and the 
magnitude of the Almighty's works. 

When my kitmudgar, pointing to Behemoth's 
Jehu, perched on his neck with a boat-hook 
contrivance for a whip, said, " S'pose Sahib 
likee, Sahib can go up," that somewhat saturnine 
heathen had no intention to be funny. Most 
of our party had been " up" before, and, with 
slight assistance — by pushing from below, by 
Jehu's pulling from above — were soon to be 
seen leaning over the rails of the howdahs, sur- 
veying the surrounding country from their com- 
manding eminence. 

" Our Yankee friend," being neither active 
nor light, of course came last. The mountain 
had partly come down to the other Mahomets, 
and Behemoth was kneeling. Our company 
was uncomfortably masculine, so there were no 
steps provided ; the livery-stable keepers, from 
whom we hired our nags, would not insult the 
Sahibs, forsooth — " the Sahibs were birds, the 
Sahibs were serpents, the Sahibs were mon- 
keys." (Thank you !) "Must birds, must ser- 
pents, must monkeys have ladders?" So they 
boosted their Yankee friend from below, and 



Old Injin-Rubber. 61 

they hoisted their Yankee friend from above ; 
but they were weak with laughter, and they 
let go, and the sides of the mountain were no 
less slippery than steep, and the feet of their 
Yankee friend were false to him, his temper 
impatient, his wonted philosophy forgotten : so 
he slid down. 

Thrice he slid down discomfited, and, the 
third time, he carried with him the bamboo' 
front of the howdah. Then Behemoth rose to 
his feet, contemptuous, indignant, with "too 
bad" in his eye, impatience in his uplifted 
trunk, and offended dignity in his short, huffish 
grunt. But Jehu, patient and busy, picked 
away at his organ of amativeness with the 
boat-hook ; there was another small, land-slide 
—and then, with unanimity of extraordinary 
boosting and hoisting, joined to a great feat of 
agility on the part of the acrobat, silently 
apprehensive of the mood of Behemoth, "our 
Yankee friend" reached the top, amid loud 
cheers, and "Yankee Doodle" from the band. 
Whereupon, Behemoth, with great upheavings, 
arose from his knees, and rolled forward. 

If you have never doubled the Cape, if your 



6z Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

stomach is treacherous and your sea-legs uncer- 
tain, if sea-sickness is your idiosyncrasy, don't 
take passage on an elephant for a voyage of 
twenty-five miles; go by water, or try a 
palkee. 

First, you are down by the stern — then bows 
under ; now a lurch to leeward pitches you 
into the scuppers, and next you are in the 
trough of the sea, wallowing to windward. 
Like a Dutch galliot, under bare poles in a 
cross-sea — how she rolls ! Like a whale in the 
wake of a steamer — how she blows ! You 
ascend a slight irregularity in the road — how 
she labors up the slope ! You pause on the 
ridge — for an instant she sways and surges, 

then 

" Down topples to the gulf below." 

You hold on by the howdah; you commend 
yourself to your usual good-luck ; you comfort 
your fears by observing how little Jehu minds 
it ; you throw away your cheroot— it's too hot 
to smoke ; you stop wishing for tiffin; you try 
to think it interesting, and commence insti- 
tuting naturalistic researches into the sagacity 
of " old Injin-Rubber," as that funny Smith 



Old Injin-Rubber. 63 

of the Company's service, nicknames the soft 
subject of your studies. 

Thus you get through six miles of monoto- 
nous jungle, relieved only by its sequel of six 
miles of monotonous paddy-field. However 
often you may wish, inside, that you were 
dead, you never once say so — "You rather like 
it." At last, you come to your " Caves," and, 
with a "By Jove, boys — this is capital!" you 
swing yourself off by the hands, and drop to 
the ground, as fearlessly as though you had 
never told a lie in your life. 



Shortly after emerging from the jungle into 
the paddy, our liveliest curiosity was aroused 
by the eccentric movements of our elephant, 
and the sudden excitement of his mahout, who, 
leaning over the head of his beast, explored the 
ground before him, and on each side, with 
curious, anxious scrutiny, conversing all the 
while with his huge philosopher and friend, 
in quick, sharp ejaculations, sometimes shrill, 
sometimes subdued, sometimes almost whis- 
pered in his ear. 



64 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

" Old Injin-Rubber" crept forward cautiously 
(imagine an elephant on tiptoe), hesitating, 
suspicious, vigilant, defensive, holding his pre- 
cious proboscis high in air. Presently he stops 
short, stares straight before him with evident 
agitation, for we feel the mass vibrating beneath 
us, as when a heavily-laden wagon crosses a 
suspension bridge. Then, hark I with trumpet 
pointed to the sky, he blows a sharp and brazen 
blast, and trots forward. At the same moment, 
an exultant exclamation from the mahout tells 
the story in a word — " the boa! the boa !" 

Right in the path, where the sun was hot- 
test, lay a serpent, such as he who charmed 
the first vanity, his vast length of splendid 
ugliness gorged, torpid, motionless, not coiled 
nor vermicular, but outstretched, prostrate and 
limp — subject, abject to the great gluttony of 
his instinct. 

" Old Injin-Rubber" pauses, as if for instruc- 
tions ; he receives them on his organ of philopro- 
genitiveness from the boat-hook. Half a dozen 
more rolls and lurches, and he plants his moun- 
tainous fore-foot on the head of the drunken 
horror — eyes, brains, blood burst out together. 



The Boa. 65 

Like an earth-worm on the pin-hook of an angling 
urchin, the monster wriggles and squirms — now 
twisting his great girth in seemingly everlasting 
knots — now erecting all his length, without a 
kink, in air — now, in a tempest of dust, thrash- 
ing the ground with resounding stripes; till, at 
last, beaten out, his crushing strength all spent, 
even his tail subdued, he lies, and only shivers. 
Then, again and again, Behemoth tosses him 
aloft, again and again dashes him to earth ; 
till, torn and spoiled, his gold and black all 
tarnished with slime, and blood, and dust, the 
Enemy is brought to shame, and the heel of a 
babe might bruise the head of the serpent. 



A small prairie of wild rice gradually and 
very uniformly sloped from a range of low 
wooded hills to the stream we had already 
crossed, and which, after a great circuit, shone 
before us again; — on the south, a fringe of 
jungle; on the north and west, the river, with 
here and there a knot of talipot trees ; on the 
east, far off, the low hills timbered with young 
teak; and, between, a multitudinous banian, 
with its tabooed grove, haunted and whispering. 



66 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

In the midst of this landscape, and rising 
suddenly from the plain, towered an imposing 
pile of consecrated rock, green to the top with 
slimy, slippery damps, oozing forever, and in 
their slowness finding time to vegetate ; plump 
cushions of bright moss, creepers creeping cu- 
riously, the glancing leaves and abundant red 
flowers of strange, poisonous-looking parasites 
— green, green, green, from base to peak — a 
mountain of soft and fragrant couches under 
curtains of dewy shade, whereon, in his ever- 
lasting round, the Wandering Jew might come 
to rest himself; topmost of all, a solitary tali- 
pot, an hundred feet of uninterrupted trunk, 
supporting on high its giant umbrella, as though 
Guadma stood beneath, and looked abroad over 
all the land ; and every where the proud and 
ruthless beauty of the ruin-making peepul, the 
missionary tree, displacing foundations, over- 
throwing pinnacles upreared to Baal, bearing 
aloft in her beautiful arms fragments from the 
havoc she has made, picking at pyramids with 
her delicate, but expert and busy, fingers — sap- 
ping the palace of Alompra and the temple of 
Guadma, in the name of Jehovah ! 



The Caves — Guadma. 67 

Some dozen or so of Burmese ragamuffins, 
who did a small business in torches for such 
excursion parties to the Caves, had accompanied 
us from the ferry, bearing baskets of bamboo 
fagots armed at one end with swabs of tow, and 
dipped in petroleum. Lighting these, and 
each man taking one, we mounted the steep, 
tortuous, and slippery foot-path of damp, green 
stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset 
it, to the low entrance of the outer cavern. 
Stooping uncomfortably, we passed into a small, 
vacant ante-chamber, having a low, dripping 
roof, perpendicular walls, clammy and green, 
and a rocky floor, sloping inward through a nar- 
row arch to a long, double, transverse gallery, 
divided in the direction of its length, partly by 
a face of rock, partly by a row of pillars. 

Here were innumerable images of Guadma, 
the counterfeit presentment of the fourth 
Boodh, whose successor is to see the end of all 
things. Innumerable, and of every stature, from 
Hop-o'-my-thumb's to Hurlothrombo's, but all 
of the identical orthodox pattern, with pendu- 
lous ears, one hand planted squarely on the knee, 
the other sleeping in the lap, an eternity of 



68 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

front-face, and a smooth stagnancy of expres- 
sion, typical of an unfathomable calm — the 
Guadma of a span as grim as he often cubits, 
and he of ten cubits as vacant as the Guadma 
of a span : of stone, of lead, of wood, of clay, 
of earthenware, and alabaster — on their bot- 
toms, on their heads, on their backs, on their 
sides, on their faces — black, white, red, yellow^ — 
an eye gone, a nose gone, an ear gone, a head 
gone — an arm off at the shoulder, a leg at the 
knee — a back split, a belly burst — Guadma, 
imperturbable, eternal, calm; in the midst of 
Time, timeless ! 

It is not annihilation which the Boodh has 
promised as the blessed crown of a myriad of 
progressive transmigrations ; it is not death — it 
is not sleep — it is this. 

Between colossal stalactites at either end of 
this gallery, we passed into two spacious and 
lofty chambers, nearly symmetrical in conform- 
ation and dimensions, separated, like the twin 
galleries, by alternate pillars and piles of 
rock. 

Our entrance awoke a Pandemonium. My- 
riads of bats and owls, and all manner of fowls 



The Bats. 69 

of darkness and bad omen, crazed by the glare 
of twenty torches, startled the echoes with 
infernal clangor. Screaming and huddling 
together, some fled under the wide skirts of 
sable, which Darkness, climbing to the roof in 
fear, drew up after her ; some hid with lesser 
shadows between columns of great girth, or in 
the remotest murky niches, or down in the 
black profound of resounding chasms; some 
bewildered, or quite blinded by the flashes of 
the "co-eternal beam," dashed themselves 
against the stony walls, and fell crippled, gasp- 
ing, staring, at our feet. 

And when at last, our guides and servants, 
mounting to pinnacles and jutting points, and 
many a frieze and coigne of vantage, placed 
blue lights on them all, and at the word illumi- 
nated all together, there was redoubled bedlam 
in the abode of Hecate, and the eternal calm of 
the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of 
outer darkness, done long ago in that black 
hole of superstition, so many damned souls 
shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, 
it were vain to question : there were no dis- 
closures in that trance of stone. 



o Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



Back of all, an hundred feet from the true 
floor, and hopelessly inaccessible, was a small 
irregular sky-light in an angle of the rock, 
through which we plainly discerned a cluster of 
bright stars ; and a stream of silver- white radi- 
ance, pouring through this upon the swarthy 
forms of our guides and the white turbans of 
our servants, dimming the torches in their hands, 
made a study for Vernet. Ah, could we but 
have mounted thither, what a never-to-be- 
forgotten view of river and mountain, forest 
and rice-field and banian grove, that window 
had for us ! 

We stopped to drink from a curious fountain. 
The peak over the caves was scooped out for a 
small lake, from the bottom of which the purest 
water, crystalline and cool, percolated through 
the roof of the cavern, and through a wondrous 
central stalactite that descended to within four 
feet of our heads, and falling, drop by drop, 
into its own little basin, hollowed in the rocky 
floor by cycles of monotonous dripping, flowed 
away in a slender thread to be lost in some 
Tophet of a chasm. 

On emerging from the caves, we found a 



Old Inj in-Rubber. j\ 

magic structure waiting to receive us — an 
agreeable shed reared, even so quickly and ex- 
pertly, of canes and talipot leaves, brought 
hither for the purpose on the " commissariat" 
elephant. There were store of camp-stools, 
and an extemporaneous table of rough planks, 
covered with a snowy cloth, and laden with the 
viands and beverages aforesaid. 

Our " animals" had been turned out in the 
paddy to amuse themselves — all except "old 
Injin-Eubber," who stood near by, playing 
with the low branches of a crooked sissoo. I 
took occasion, while our laggards were bathings 
to fraternize with him and make sociable over- 
tures. He was condescending, and exerted 
himself to entertain me — picking up two-anna 
pieces with his nimble finger and thumb, and 
handing them to his partner on top ; crooking 
his knee for me to mount, and gently lifting 
m3, standing erect, to a level with his ears, so 
that I could clamber into the howdah ; per- 
mitting me to sit astride on one of his tusks, and 
playfully riding me a-cock-horse, somewhat to 
the damage of my dignity ; making me grand 
salaam by exalting his trunk above his head, 



72 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

then gracefully waving it up and down, at the 
same time blowing his horn. 

Our repast over, we mounted and rolled 
homeward, reaching Moulmein at dusk. At 
the ferry, with many regrets, we parted from 
our mountainous friends. I embraced " old Injin- 
Rubber's" trunk, making him sensible, I doubt 
not, of the affection I had conceived for him, 
and which I retain unaltered to this day. 



Dacoitees. 73 



CHAPTER IX. 

DACOITEES A BURMESE HOUSE. 

Moulmein had been. always liable, if not to 
a combined attack, at least to the predatory- 
incursions of the thieves of Martaban, an im- 
portant village on the opposite side of the 
river. A year before, these dacoitees had been 
frequent and successful. The robbers crossed 
in war-boats, at night, the stream being narrow 
where it separates the towns, and, in formidable 
force and well armed, made successful descents 
upon the native quarters of Moulmein, occu- 
pied by friendly Burmese, and Bengalee and 
Chinese traders. A small force of Sepoys, which 
formed the patrol, could be easily intimidated 
or overpowered, and the suburbs effectually 
pillaged, before the alarm could reach the can- 
tonments, and the troops be got under arms. 
With such impunity, indeed, were these sallies 
effected that silence ceased to be enjoined, and a 

nocturnal alarm, accompanied by repeated vol- 
4 



74 Up an d Down the Irrawaddi. 

leys of musketry and much banging of gongs, 
was easily explained by the nonchalant sentinel 
who promenaded your enclosure with the cool 
assurance that it was " only some Martaban 
dacoits." 

In the mean time, flimsy bamboo huts were 
being riddled, men, women, and children often 
included in a common massacre — not unat- 
tended by grosser outrages which scarcely ad- 
mit of recital— and dwellings wantonly fired 
which had first been leisurely pillaged. From 
all these expeditions, however, the booty ob- 
tained was light. 

Burmese wealth, where it is to be suspected 
at all, is (with an eye to these dacoitees) com- 
monly converted into rubies and concealed. 
The wearing apparel of a people who go com- 
paratively naked is not considerable ; nor are 
the furniture and domestic utensils of families 
who feed with their fingers from one pumpkin 
rind in common, and repose luxuriously on a 
yard and a half of "Turkey red." 

As for their dwellings, the conflagration and 
reconstruction of one of them is at any time 
little more than a frolic. The material of 



A Burmese House. 75 

which they are built grows in abundance a few 
yards off in the jungle. No expert journey- 
man builders are required ; the art is taught in 
every family, which also furnishes its own 
labor. Split bamboos are of easy carriage ; no 
nails are demanded, for they are tied together 
with strips of cane and thatched with palm or 
other leaves. And thus a commodious, well- 
constructed dwelling, sufficiently spacious for 
the accommodation of a large family, provided 
with various pleasant chambers and the luxury 
(which is a necessity there) of an ample veran- 
dah round about the whole, and all together 
well ventilated, weather-proof, and ingeni- 
ously contrived to encounter the chances of 
a latitude of typhoons and rainy seasons, is 
erected in two days, at no cost, by a man and 
his wife, a concubine or two, and some " babes 
and sucklings." 

Such a structure as this was subsequently 
the sufficiently comfortable hospital of the 
writer (at that time on the sick list) during a 
rainy season at Eangoon, when literally the 
floods do come, and pour on enduringly for four 
accursed months. Strange to say, though many 



76 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

a crevice in the roof admitted the light of 
heaven, no water penetrated through the same 
apertures. This is doubtless owing to the 
peculiar formation of the leaves with which 
the thatching is done, and which resemble so 
many gutters or grooved tiles. The dampness 
of the ground is avoided by the elevation of the 
lower floor, which is laid across a frame raised 
upon uprights some two or three feet from the 
earth, and leaving a space beneath where fowls 
and pariah dogs are snugly housed in common, 
and rarely disturbed, save by the occasional 
apparition of some vagabond of a wild pig, 
whereat the aforesaid pariah dogs incontinently 
run away. 

My house consisted of one large apartment, 
(twenty feet square), which was parlor, office, 
and dining-room in one ; two smaller sleeping 
apartments at one end and a bath-room at the 
other; the whole surrounded by a wide veran- 
dah, over which the roof projected very far, 
affording dry accommodations. Here, in the 
dry season and when the heats w T ere greatest, 
we made our lodging. Hither our couches 
and musquito-nets were brought, and here we 



A Burmese House. 77 

read, smoked, or talked by day, and slept by 
night, amid the howling of pariah dogs (a 
sentimental tribe, whose custom is vociferously 
to serenade the moon when she is present, or 
diabolically to bewail her absence when she is 
not), the hooting of owls and other spirits of 
darkness and the air, and a babel of sleepless 
beggars and boats-people on the beach. 

This not unpleasant abode, together with its 
" offices" (consisting of kitchen, stable, and 
lodgings for the servants) was completed in four 
days, at a cost of two hundred rupees, ($100), 
the Burmese contractor finding everything, 
inclusive of the subsistence of his people. 



78 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER X. 

HONORABLE JOHN AND DISHONORABLE JOHN " THE OLD YAL 

LER" — THE FIGHTING MISSIONARY OUR FIRST STOCKADE 

A HERO. 

Honorable John and dishonorable John — 
"John Kumpny" and "John Burmah" — had 
expended several months in tedious and boot- 
less recrimination. On the part of the Com- 
pany, obsolete delays, under the pretext of hu- 
manity, were necessary to appease a jealous and 
formidable peace party at home. A thousand 
tricks of procrastination, as successful as they 
were transparent and vexatious, kept Burmese 
officials busy and English batteries idle. The 
tattooed diplomats of Ava required time for the 
mustering of forces, the furbishing of old honey- 
combed ordnance, the purchase of Captain 
Mayflower Crisp's condemned muskets, and the 
construction of stockades; and the experience 
of the previous war had taught them by what 
devices to procure it. 



The Two Johns. 79 

Overtures and threats (in a " Pickwickian 
sense") freely interchanged between the parties ; 
concessions half-proffered only to be seasonably 
recalled ; grievance met with grievance, ex- 
postulation with expostulation, etiquette with 
etiquette, threats with defiance, amiable ad- 
vances with officious protestations of regard and 
regret and a host of flowing "assurances of 
distinguished consideration ;" flags of truce, 
cocked hats, and " gold umbrellas," going and 
coming, to the infinite admiration and awe of 
the lower orders ; and the by no means flattering 
spectacle of refined British diplomacy contend- 
ing, lamely enough, with Burmese treachery 
and craft : all these were the circumstances 
which had so long detained the Commodore's 
impatient little squadron in " masterly inac- 
tivity," to the infinite disgust of officers, the 
melancholy wear and tear of men, and the 
frightful consumption of blessed Majesty's coals. 
Nor would John Burmahhave so noisily praised 
his gods had he but reflected to what a formi- 
dable figure the bill of damages and costs, to 
be served upon him hereafter, was inexorably 
swelling. 



80 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

Such was the state of affairs when, leaving 
Moulmein, we approached the mouth of the 
Kangoon river on the morning of January 8th, 
1S52. Great was our astonishment to find the 
Commodore lying at the mouth of the river, 
with the King's ship, a veritable prize. This 
"King's ship," or " yellow ship," as we were 
accustomed to style her indifferently, was 
a large frigate, built for the Burmese on 
European stocks. She was new, having only 
her lower-masts in, and, though cut for heavy 
batteries, was unarmed and unmanned, being 
provided only with an awkward guard of ter- 
rified boats-people, under the command of one 
" Commodore" Abdoolah, a clever, amusing 
savage, half Burmese, half Malay, who, on the 
strength of having been a pirate once, had got 
himself appointed to the chief command of the 
navy of Ava— that is, the King's ship. 

Commodore Abdoolah, being troubled with 
no scrupules of loyalty, was afterward easily 
persuaded to fraternize with Commodore Lam- 
bert, who forthwith promoted him from his 
shabby-genteel command to the more lucrative, 
if less glorious, post of pilot-in-ordinary for 



"The Old Yaller." 81 

our squadron : in which capacity he dismissed 
his allegiance in search of his conscience, and 
repeatedly proved himself one of the most 
consummate villains and useful men on 
earth. 

His fleet and flag-ship had all been comprised 
in this monstrous naval miscarriage, the " Old 
Yaller," which, after all, was an experiment 
of some promise, and no doubt, on British 
stocks and in British waters, would have come 
to something. She was constructed very slow- 
ly, and at an enormous cost, of the choicest 
teak, (the best of all timber for ship-building,) 
of which the finest trees had been tabooed by 
Royal command for her behoof. Though a 
queer-looking craft "outside," there was much 
in her "lines," and the nice particulars of her 
construction, to please the eye of an expert, 
and she was surely one of the strongest and 
most durable, as she was one of the largest, 
ships of her class afloat. The way she came into 
our Commodore's hands was this : He had sent 
a party of officers to negotiate with the new 
Woon. This deputation consisted of gentle- 
men from the Fox, among whom were Cap- 



82 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

tain Tarleton, the commander of that frigate, 
and the Commodore's Secretary, Mr. Southey. 
These were subsequently joined on shore by 
an American missionary, Mr. K -, a remark- 
able person, to whose influence, and the mea- 
sures it procured, are unquestionably to be 
attributed the events of that and the following 
days. The Governor, to the surprise of all who 
were not prepared for Burmese treachery, ar- 
rogance, or caprice— for he had lately manifest- 
ed the sweetest of moods — refused to receive 
the deputation, on the pretext of a customary 
siesta, and kept the officers waiting at his gate 
like so many beggars ; his guards assuring them 
that it was as much as their heads were worth 
to disturb him, though the illustrious Woon of 
India himself (the Governor-General) should 
call " house! house !" The plea was plausible 
because consistent with the custom of all Indian 
people, but not the less crafty and insolent on that 
account, the Governor being well advised of the 
importance and friendly purpose of the depu- 
tation, and choosing to make capital of their 
humiliation. Those gentlemen were, most of 
them, uninstructed in the language and habits 



The Fighting Missionary. 83 

of the Burmese, and were therefore almost at a 
loss how to act. 

At this crisis our Yankee parson appeared, 
who, to the shrewdness and ready resources 
of Connecticut united the quick conclusions 
and prompt execution of the backwoods. His 
knowledge of the people and their language, 
derived from twenty years of familiar inter- 
course in preaching and teaching, was almost 
perfect. Besides, he was not of the peace 
party. He was the apostle of a wholesome 
chastisement, and his laborious narratives of 
" harmless wretches poked to death with sharp 
elbows," and "innocent babes pounded in a 
mortar," had often made the old Commodore 
swear and everybody else laugh. 

On this occasion long-suffering and forbear- 
ance and the formal presentation of the un- 
smitten cheek were no part of his gospel. He 
advised the deputation of the insolence of the 
Governor, and of the tricks attempted to be put 
upon them, recommending them at the same 
time to report his conduct instantly to the 
Commodore. 

This they did, of course, and the measures 



84 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

thereupon adopted by that officer were at once 
prompt and vigorous. He immediately took 
possession of the King's ship, warned all Euro- 
peans, and others claiming British protection, 
to embark in the merchantmen in two hours, 
and apprised the Governor that unless he came 
on board the flag-ship early the next morning 
and apologized publicly, and with all humility, 
for the insult offered to himself through his 
officers, he would not only not restore the ship, 
but would proceed at once to blockade the 
rivers, refusing to have any further intercourse 
with the authorities. Thereupon he dropped 
down with his prize to a point below the town 
and its immediate defenses, while the foreign 
residents of Rangoon proceeded to execute his 
order with more haste than prudence or self- 
possession. The merchantmen were preparing 
to receive the persons and property, as much 
as could be got off, of all Europeans, Americans, 
British-Indian subjects, (comprising Parsees, 
Armenians, Chittagonians, various Mussulman 
traders, timber-cutters, etc.) and the servants 
of the Honorable Company. 

Such was the aspect of affairs when the 



Purification by Fire. 8c 

Phlegethon entered the river. Of course much 
property was lost. Books, medicines, surgical 
instruments, furniture, clothing — all the stock 
in trade of a missionary and a missionary 
doctor — were abandoned to the authorities of 
Rangoon, who, accustomed to regard such 
tools of witchcraft with all a heathen's hor- 
ror, doubtless consigned them to their shaven, 
yellow-coated poonghees to be purified by fire 
in the sight of Guadma. It is much to be 
deplored that choice collections of Burmese 
manuscripts of rare interest and antiquity were 
lost at this time; for the poonghees are no 
contemptible scholars, and their ambitious re- 
searches are faithfully recorded on gilt-edged 
leaves of sandal wood, arranged in volumes, 
and religiously preserved in the holy places 
of their grotesque monasteries. 

We were busily engaged in towing out the 
merchantmen. Meanwhile, the Governor had 
sent a letter to the Commodore refusing to 
apologize in the manner required. He had, 
moreover, written to the Governor-General, 
stating his reasons for the insolent attitude 
he occupied, and complaining of Commodore 



86 



Up and Down the [rrawaddi. 



Lambert as a quarrelsome and overbearing 
person, who sent kv a, deputation of drunken 
officers and a low American missionary to 
make a noise at his gate." Furthermore, he 
threatened that, if the Commodore presumed bo 
send any o(' our vessels down the river again 
without liia permission, his stockades should 
fire on them. The Commodore's reply to this 
challenge appeared in the form oi' an order to 
three of the steamers to proceed down the 
stream and past the stockades, one after the 
other, and at provoking intervals. 

The order was executed, but without suc- 
cess; we played off and on with them for half 
an hour without drawing a shot, and so left in 
disgust. We proceeded to the mouth of the 
river to see tin 4 merchantmen safely out, and 
then returned to the stockade more saucily 
than before, but, finding no work for us there, 
went back to the Commodore : another message 
from that "gassy" Governor, thai if an attempt 

should be made 4 to tOW Out the King's ship, the 

war should commence on the morrow with an 

attack from him. 

In anticipation, but with soarely a hope, of 



Our Firsl Stockade 



8 7 



being fired into from the " I>a Silva" stockade, 
as it was called, the Commodore dropped down 
with the Fox, early on the morning of the 
LOth of January, having previously ordered the 
Hermes to follow with I. lie, King's .ship in i.ow, 
and oii iso, Ives in the wake of them. 

As wo came down we found Uie (Jornmodore 
lying, broadside on, at the stockade, the Serpent 
having got aground higher up the river. There 
was a hurry, and a rush, and a lively flourish 
of gold umbrellas on shore, as the Hermes ap- 
proached wild) her prize. Next came the order 
"beat to quarters!" Three minutes afterward, 
eleven guns from fche fori, right at the Hermes. 
Then up wont Uie Commodore's signal to "en- 
gage Uie enemy," and Uie work began. The 
frigate, of course, opened firsl, — broadside after 
broadside, a rapid and annihilating fire ship 

through Uie works. 

Tin; PMegethon took up a closer position 
and engaged them at short distance ; and the 
Hermes, which had oast loose from Uie prize, 
attacked Uie lower stockade, where was a small 
village — half barracks, half police station. 

in these positions an uninterrupted bom- 



88 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

bardment was maintained for two hours and a 
quarter (from ten to a quarter past twelve) ; 
the enemy, who had comparatively few ser- 
viceable guns, expending their resources in 
a most desultory and ill-directed fire. The 
position of their batteries being high, and the 
advantages of " elevation and depression" not 
being taught in their exercises, their shots, for 
the most part, passed over us. Many times 
their fire was silenced, to be resumed in a few 
minutes by some brave fellow who would have 
his last crack at us. So long as a red rag of 
breech-cloth was to be seen, or one poor spear 
glittered in the sun, we pounded away with 
round shot and shells, with an occasional di- 
vertissement of " carcases" and rockets. 

At twelve o'clock not a man was to be seen ; 
the stockades were riddled in every direction ; 
the people who survived had fled into the jun- 
gle (with which, in every instance, the stock- 
ades were provided as covers for retreating 
garrisons); and one poor cock — the royal, not 
the national emblem, for in Burmah they 
change these things with their monarchs — 
done in white on a red flag, and left fluttering 



A Hero. 89 

in a corner, was all that remained of the insane 
pride of the gubernatorial blackguard. 

As soon as the ships' firing ceased, the Phlc- 
geihorCs cutters were sent to destroy their boats 
along shore and pick up such arms as could 
be found. Among the latter were some vener- 
able United States muskets from the Harper's 
Ferry Armory. How came they there ? 

*' Story, God bless you, they had one to tell, sir." 

One pretty incident occurred in the midst 
of this affair, which is worth narrating. Just 
in the hottest of the fire, and when every shot 
was telling on the stockade, two war-boats 
emerged from a narrow creek, behind the 
upper angle of the works, filled with armed 
men — perhaps sixty in each — and commanded 
by a distinguished-looking chief, very hand- 
somely attired, and wearing a dhar (or sword, 
curved like a scimetar, but not, like that wea- 
pon, terminating in a broad point), with golden 
hilt, and scabbard of chased gold. In many 
of these dhars the hilts were found to be hol- 
low and filled with amulets, jewels, miniature 
images of Guadma, inscriptions on bits of 



90 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

silver — all consecrated by the poonghees. A 
bearer behind him held above his head the 
inseparable gold umbrella, which, in that coun- 
try, as much denotes the grandee as the star or 
garter does in England. Besides, his legs, tat- 
tooed nearly to the ankles (for none but the King 
can tattoo his feet) were his patents of nobility. 
There could not be greater courage in mor- 
tal man than was displayed by this fellow. 
He brought his boats down with the tide to a 
spot not twenty yards distant from where the 
frigate's shots were falling, until he got di- 
rectly over against the Phlegethon. Then he 
stood up in the stern, and stamped his foot, 
and waved his sword toward us, exerting 
himself furiously to induce the other boat 
to join him in the attack. At this moment, 
the officer in command of the thirty-two- 
pounder astern, brought that gun to bear 
upon him, and was in the act of firing a shot 
which would have sent the brave fellow to 
perdition, when the captain shouted from the 
bridge : " Don't fire at that man ! Let no one 
hurt that man!" So he escaped into the jun- 
gle, poor fellow, only to lose his head when 



A Hero. gl 

his failure became known to the King. To 
escape, in such a case, is the most atrocious 
military crime for which the laws of Meenyoo 
(a sort of Burmese Solon or Confutze) provide. 
Within the stockade we found only the 
wrecks of bamboo huts, many wooden guns 
(huge logs of teak bored like pumps, and 
braced with rattan), empty rice pots, and naked 
fish-poles. The only objects of curiosity and 
contemplation were multitudinous tom-cats, all 
carrying their tails aloft — those appendages, in 
all the specimens I was permitted to examine, 
being provided with a sharp twist or disloca- 
tion half-way between the attachment and the 
extremity (whether natural or artificial, for 
ornament or utility, science has yet to say), 
which imparted to that feature an expression 
indescribably droll, of mixed waggery and co- 
quetry. 



92 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XL 

OUR BURMESE CLIENTS — WAR-BOATS A FUNNY PANIC. 

As the Phlegethon descended the river, skirt- 
ing the shores as she passed, we overhauled 
several war-boats well manned, some of which 
we seized and destroyed, making prisoners of 
the crews, about a hundred men in all. In 
other instances, the people took to the water, 
first contriving to capsize their boats, and sink 
the arms and ammunition they contained, 
which, though harmless enough in their hands, 
they had reason to apprehend might prove 
fatal in ours. 

These prisoners were conveyed to Moul 
mein, where we unconditionally released them. 
They gladly became inoffensive and useful 
denizens of that place, after officiously impart-- 
ing to our officers much useful information 
touching the numbers and condition of their 
own forces, the fortifications then existing or 
in process of construction, the movements of 



Our Burmese Clients. 93 

the chiefs, their plans, as well as they had 
been able to ascertain them, and their corre- 
spondence with Ava. Indeed, throughout the 
war, in no instance were prisoners detained, 
even when active partisans and of high rank, 
save when they were possessed of important 
information, or their services could be made 
available in some special emergency ; and even 
in such cases they suffered under no restraint, 
save their brief detention, and were rewarded 
in proportion to their usefulness. 

Toward the close of the campaign, among the 
Company's best friends, were to be found many 
of these reclaimed Burmese. The disaffection 
of the people was unanimous. They had learned 
to appreciate, at a very early period of our 
intercourse with them, the personal security, 
encouragement to industry, and freedom of 
competition, guaranteed to them by British 
control; and in simple faith and in considerable 
numbers, they eagerly accepted British pro- 
tection, demanding no assurances of safeguard 
beyond a plighted word, and finding no odious 
conditions attached to the compact. Only the 
circumstances of their impressment (for a volun- 



94 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

teer in Burmah would be an anomaly), their 
families detained as hostages for their good 
behavior, and their experienced apprehensions 
of the vengeance of their masters, deterred them. 
Ofttimes these reasons alone impelled whole 
towns to take up arms and engage in the strug- 
gle against us, which would otherwise, and by 
choice, have hoisted the white flag, and ex- 
tended the olive-branch. They asked nothing 
more than that we should not at any time, from 
the hour of their espousing our cause, withdraw 
our countenance and guns. This would have 
required a steamer at every village between Ran- 
goon and Prome, which our force was inade- 
quate to furnish. In this way, we had well 
nigh lost the alliance, if not even the neu- 
trality, of Pegu. 

In a volume entitled " Two Years in Ava, 
by an Officer on the Staff of the Quartermaster- 
G-eneral's Department" (8vo. London : Murray, 
1827), occurs a description of Burmese w T ar- 
boats, which will answer well enough for the 
present period, and may with propriety be 
quoted here, for changes in Ava are unfrequent 
and slow. There is no such thing as " Young 



War-Boats. 95 

Burmah," though that precocious politician 
has got as far as Bengal on his way thither, 
and " Young Bengal" is as well known at 
Government House in Calcutta, as " Young 
America" in the lobby of the House of Repre- 
sentatives; the meaning of "progress" is 
as mysterious to them as the politics of 
Punch or the Democratic Review. All they 
have learned in twenty-five years, is : that 
British batteries are not made, like their own, 
of teak timber ; that British guns shoot 
straighter than they did a quarter of a century 
ago ; and that eighty-fours make more noise 
and hit harder than thirty-twos. If " Young 
Burmah" does not apply himself, " Young 
Japan" may yet be at the head of the class. 

But, speaking of war-boats, the " Officer on 
the Staff of the Quartermaster-General's De- 
partment" says : 

" The Burmese war-boat is formed of the trunk of the 
magnificent teak-tree, first roughly shaped, and then ex- 
panded by means of fire, until it attains sufficient width to 
admit two people sitting abreast. On this a gunwale, rising 
a foot above the water, is fixed, and the stem and stern taper 
to a point, the latter being much higher than the other, and 
ornamented with fret-work and gilding. On the bow is 
placed a gun, sometimes of a nine pound calibre, but gener- 



96 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

ally smaller ; and the centre of the boat is occupied by the 
rowers, varying in number from twenty to a hundred, who in' 
the large boats use the oar, and in the small ones the paddle. 
" A war-boat in motion is a very pleasing object. The 
rapidity with which it moves ; its lightness and the small 
surface above the water ; the uniform pulling of the oar fall- 
ing in cadence with the songs of the boatmen, who, taking 
the lead from one of their number, join in chorus, and keep 
time with the dip of the oars ; the rich gilding which adorns 
the boat, and the neat uniform dress (?) of the crew, place it 
to the eye of a stranger in a curious and interesting point of 
view, and, in regard to appearance, induce him, when con- 
trasting it with an English boat, to give the former the 
preference. In point of swiftness, our best man-of-war boats 
could not compete with them, and of this superiority they 
generally availed themselves, when an action was impend- 
ing." 

It is difficult to imagine, in spite of the gene- 
ral accuracy of this description, what manner 
of men these could have been, whose " neat 
uniform dress" so pleased the officer. No 
doubt he alludes to "undress" uniform, which 
by Burmese regulation consists of about a 
yard of tattooing, half a yard of breech-cloth 
discretionary, and a foot of the invariable Turkey- 
red twisted in the hair. 

I retain a merry recollection of the first war- 
boats I saw at Rangoon, when belligerent mes- 
sages were beginning to be bandied between 
the Commodore and the Governor, who, in- 



War-Boats. 97 

spired with Dutch courage, had summoned a 
flotilla from Prome. 

One morning thirty of these gilded craft (the 
Quarter-master's officer has described them 
well) came down the river, and approached 
the town in long-drawn file. Red flags fluttered 
in the bow and stern of each, spears glittered, 
and innocent-looking muskets. A thousand 
paddles, wielded by two thousand vigorous arms, 
swept the water as one, " falling in cadence" 
with the monotonous songs of the steersmen. 
A thousand triumphal gongs were banged as 
though they were about to sit down to simul- 
taneous dinner at a thousand Burmese Astor 
Houses. A hundred triumphal dances were 
executed by a hundred indecent gentlemen in 
Terpsichorean gymnastics, and the burden of 
their war-song was something in this sort : 

" Burraah-man strong man ; 
Hum, hum, hah ! 
Kumpny-man no can ; 

Hum, hum, hah ! 
Burmah-man run fast ; 

Hum, hum, hah ! 
Kumpny-man come last ; 
(An innocent compliment). 
Hum, hum, hah I" 



98 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

With each " hah !" a vigorous plunge of 
every paddle into the brine in strictly musical 
time, and the low, slender craft shot through 
the water like a feathered shaft, her bow half- 
hid beneath a pile of foam. 

Presently the Tenasseri?n, which had been 
hourly expected with dispatches from Cal- 
cutta, rounded the point and approached her 
anchorage under " full power" and with a 
rapid current. She was not on the Gover- 
nor's programme for the day, nor was her 
" back-water," which- — being a phenomenon 
for which the Burmese steersmen were wholly 
unprepared — caught the boats " broadside on" 
half way between the ship and shore, and 
throwing them for an instant into ridicu- 
lous disorder, and their crews into a panic, 
capsized them without exception. In a mo- 
ment every gong was silent, every singer 
dumb, every dancer paralyzed, every flag 
struck, every spear lowered, and arms and 
ammunition speedily "expended," — as the 
Company's pursers say of stores which cannot 
be accounted for. 

Poor wretches ! their dismay was complete, 



A Funny Panic. gg 

their astonishment most ludicrous, their songs 
of triumph at once converted into vociferous 
lamentation ; and all would have been su- 
premely droll but for the thought that more 
than one head must pay for the fun. 

Later in the progress of the war, a superb 
specimen of these war-boats was sent to the 
Queen. It was discovered by some of our 
men hauled high and dry in the jungle, on 
the left bank of the river as we were descend- 
ing from Prome. 

Some idea of its dimensions can be formed 
from the fact that it seated a hundred rowers. 
The stern was spread out like the tail of a 
graceful bird ; and the sides, above the water- 
line , were chastely carved in a style of art un- 
approachable out of Burmah, where skill in 
wood-carving is the most esteemed and lucra- 
tive of the handicrafts. The whole was elabo- 
rately gilded within and without, and carved 
oars were left in their places lashed to pins 
with thongs of cane, no row-locks being used. 



loo Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XII. 

"ALL TOGETHER, ENGAGE THE ENEMY!" — THE STORMING OF 
RANGOON AND DAX.LAH THE SWIMMER'S CHARM. 

It is a lovely Sunday morning in the begin- 
ning of April, 1852. Seventeen British war- 
steamers, with a frigate and brig-of-war, as 
well as thirteen large transports, in tow, ascend 
the Kangoon river, between the stockades of 
Rangoon and Dallah, and falling, with well- 
ordered regularity, each into the position as- 
signed her, let go their anchors in long single 
line of battle. Thus far there has been no 
interruption from the Burmese batteries, which 
are unaccountably silent. The Commodore 
disapproves of Sunday work, and his orders 
are to respect the Sabbath unless it be first 
broken by the stockades. 

Scarcely, however, has Her Majesty's steam- 
frigate, Salamander, dropped into line and 
broken the almost silence with the prolonged 
rattle of her chain, when the boom of the 



"Engage the Enemy!" 101 

Pagoda guns is heard; the Kangoon Woon, 
from his high Citadel in the Golden Dagon, 
has opened a heavy fire upon his own people 
in the river-side stockades— perhaps to force 
them to begin the fight, perhaps to cut off 
terrified runaways. 

Presently Dallah takes the hint, and chal 
lenges the Rattler, Hermes, Mozuffer, and Sesos- 
tris, which have waited impatiently for an 
expression of her wishes. And at last the 
slow guns of the outer Eangoon stockade open 
their mouths, and speak unanimously in for- 
cible language. Then the signal flies to the 
Rattler's peak — " All together, engage the 



enemy." 



Both broadsides at once, into both towns at 
once — eighty-twos, sixty-fours, thirty-twos, 
twenty-fours, eighteens, twelves! "all to- 
gether." 

Dallah retorts with spirit, but is taken in 
two hours and a half, and fired by a party of 
sailors and marines. On both sides of the 
river the Burmese display distinguished cour- 
age and endurance under a feu d'enfer from the 
shipping, of shells and round-shot, and shrap- 



102 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

nell, and grape, and canister, and rockets, and 
carcasses. 

A Burmese chieftain, mounted in an embra- 
sure of the Rangoon stockade, leans against a 
flag-staff and directs his gunners, his person 
bravely exposed to the storm. Suddenly he 
disappears in the smoke — God knows whither. 

A fair breach is opened, and a crowd of 
naked, delirious wretches are seen dragging 
down a huge field-piece on great clumsy 
wooden wheels, to close it. All that are left 
from a tornado of grape are finished by the 
bayonets of the " Royal Irish." who meet the 
enemy in the gap. 

Some wounded prisoners are brought to our 
surgeons. On the way, one poor fellow, wild 
with pain and fear, breaks from our men and 
takes to the water of a wide creek, which sets in 
between the stockades. Snatching from his neck 
the charm which is suspended there — a round 
shell of lacquered cane, filled with miniature 
idols, bits of silver foil bearing sacred inscrip- 
tions, and perhaps some hieroglyphic impos- 
ture that he believes is his horoscope, the 
whole duly prayed for and paid for, as a busi- 



The Swimmer's Charm. 103 

ness transaction between his poonghee and 
himself — he casts it upon the water far before 
him, in the direction of the opposite bank. 
Then, expertly, and with an extraordinary 
exertion of strength, making an eddying wake, 
he strikes out for it. 

Balls patter in the stream thickly around his 
head, but spare him always, as though there 
were indeed some virtue in his charm, his 
prayers, his incantations ; for, as often as he 
reaches his floating superstition, he hugs it to 
his heaving breast — and for a space, seemingly 
forgetful of the danger, he pauses and his lips 
move rapidly. Again, rising waist-high in the 
water, and tossing his brown arms aloft, he 
throws his shell across the stream, and dives, 
and dives again ; and when presently he comes 
panting to the surface, he dashes the water 
from his straining eyes, utters a cry of joy as 
he catches sight of his senseless toy, and strikes 
out lustily. 

Our men are touched with admiration, with 
compassion ; they will not hurt him ; the few 
shots they fire now are but in the rude sport of 
soldiers and sailors warm with the chase ; thev 



104 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

are careful for him, are even anxious for his life ; 
and when at last he reaches the opposite bank, 
and throwing himself prostrate, kissing his 
charm and clasping it to his forehead, lies pant- 
ing but safe, they treat him to three cheers. 

Now up goes the British ensign on a long 
bamboo (for the Burmese have cut down their 
flag-staff, surmounted by the Sacred Goose, to 
save it from desecration), and our people have 
possession of a formidable angle of the outer 
stockade. 



Kemmendine. 



105 



CHAPTER XIII. 

KEMMENDINE — FIRE-RAFTS — CONFIDING CREATURES I — A WOOD- 
EN GUN THE STOCKADE THE ASPECT AND THE VOICES 

OF THE NIGHT RANGOON IS OURS BATHING UNDER DIF- 
FICULTIES. 

At this point in the assault, the Phlegethon 
was ordered to take the Serpent in tow, and 
proceed past the "King's Wharf and upper 
Stockade, to Kemmendine, some four or five 
miles distant by a sharp bend in the river — not 
half so far by land. 

Kemmendine had been always a rendezvous 
for war-boats. During the first Burmese war, 
numbers of fire-rafts, ingeniously contrived of 
canes, loose planks, and brush, saturated with 
petroleum and ignited, were constructed there 
and launched on the river to drift down upon 
the British fleet, to which they were dan- 
gerous as well as troublesome. A force, sent 
by Sir Archibald Campbell to burn the place, 
met with obstinate and damaging resistance. 

Our orders were to take Kemmendine at 

5* 



lo6 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

once, destroying all stockades and war-boats. 
As we passed the King's wharf the batteries 
there opened brisk fire npon us. We stayed 
to fight them for half an hour, when, the Sala- 
mander coming to our relief, we left them to be 
finished by her, and pushed on to Kemmen- 
dine. 

As we steamed up the river and past the 
village, the people appeared to be deserting it. 
Their small boats were plying up and down 
and across the stream, seemingly laden with 
household goods. As we passed through them, 
they made grand salaam, waving their arms in 
gestures of welcome and God-speed. Some on 
the ghauts and banks, and in front of the 
houses, greeted us with songs and triumphal 
dances, with beating of tom-toms and gongs, 
and flourishing of white flags. 

One fellow, who, by his airs and his fine 
clothes, we took for a person of note, hailed the 
ship and treated us to an off-hand speech, to the 
effect that he was delighted to welcome us to 
those waters, and begged us to accept, in the 
name of Kemmendine, his respectful assurances 
of distinguished consideration, He was happy 



A Wooden Gun. 107 

to say that, a little higher up the river, an inso- 
lent stockade, commanded by an insane dacoit, 
would be found, where, he had no doubt, a 
brilliant victory awaited his brave, handsome, 
and cunning friends, the Inglee Rajahs. 

We left him "hyfalutin," and, in half an 
hour, came upon a remarkably strong stockade. 
On the bank, between it and the river, a 
party of nearly naked fellows, commanded by a 
busy-body in a red helmet, were training a 
monstrous black gun on us, which they had 
mounted upon some logs of teak. The thing 
certainly looked formidable, and we had reason 
to apprehend that a well-directed shot from it 
would cut us clean in two. Before we could 
bring our forward gun to bear — the channel 
being too narrow, and the current too strong, 
to enable us to place the ship in position, en- 
cumbered as we were with the Serpent — they 
fired. 

Although they seemed to have got nearly 
the proper bearings and elevation, their shot 
flew wide — we could not discover whither. 
Crowding on steam, we pressed forward to 
reply, withholding our fire for a short rang? 



io8 Up and Down the Xrrawaddi. 

and a sure aim. With surprising celerity they 
had reloaded, and now fired again. This time 
we heard their shot sing as it passed over us, 
as high as the mainyard. 

The explosion was terrific — even the ship 
trembled. When the dense pile of vapor rolled 
away, all that was to be seen of gun or gunners 
was a disordered pile of smoking logs, some 
fragments of wood floating on the stream, 
half a dozen blackened forms prostrate and 
writhing, and one or two yelling savages scam- 
pering into the jungle. The gun was but a 
teak-log bored, and bound with bamboo strips 
and rattan ; they had crammed it to the muz- 
zle, and it had burst — the engineers were hoist 
with their own petard. 

We at once briskly attacked the stockade, 
which defended itself with spirit. When night 
fell, having accomplished but little with our 
heaviest fire, except to silence their guns for 
the present, we dropped down, opposite the 
village, and waited till daylight to renew the 
attack. All that night, as we afterward learned, 
the villagers were engaged — not, as we at first 
generously imagined, in the innocent and con- 



The Stockade. kj^ 

fiding labor of removing their little alls, tmt — 
in conveying boat-load after boat-load of rice 
and fresh water, and mats with small arms, and 
sometimes even heavy guns, concealed beneath 
them, into the stockade. Every man in those 
boats had left in the village a wife or an aged 
parent, every woman a child or a young sister, 
as a hostage for their faithful and successful 
execution of the enterprise. On their courage 
arid their cunning hung many a dear life. 

At day-break we returned to the stockade 
and began six hours of uninterrupted assault, 
covering every loop-hole, and making a target 
of every Burman who dared to show a lock 
of his hair, much more the color of his breech- 
cloth. But, although we afforded them no 
opportunity to retaliate, they sustained but 
small damage at our hands. Their stockade 
was one of the strongest in the country. A 
square of five hundred feet on each face was 
inclosed in a double row of high teak logs, of 
enormous girth, driven, like piles, deeply into 
the earth, and as close together as possible. 
To these was added, on both sides, an embank- 
ment of twelve feet without an opening. The 



no Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

interior was intrenched in every direction — 
the trenches eight feet deep and covered in 
with the heaviest timbers, so as to be quite 
bomb-proof. On all sides the approaches were 
armed with a sort of vegetable bayonets, short 
bamboos, sharpened and stuck upright in the 
ground. 

Our shot seldom reached them, save when 
they voluntarily exposed themselves, as in ex- 
tinguishing, by means of great hollow bamboos 
filled with water, the flames which eight times 
our carcasses lighted in vain — the teak was 
green, and would not burn. One man — per- 
haps an " Invulnerable" under the inspiration 
of opium — climbed to the top of the stockade, 
and struck up a war-dance. Our second officer 
knocked off his head with a round shot. 

An attempt was made to land a storming 
party ; but hardly had the boats left the ships' 
sides, before the face of the stockade was all 
alive and yelling, and our men were immedi- 
ately repulsed with a wild but very dangerous 
fire, from near a thousand bad muskets. We 
covered the retreat with our guns, and safely 
drew off the stormers. At night, our ^mmuni- 



Voices of the Night. m 

tion being almost expended, we again dropped 
down to the village. 

Next morning we sent to Rangoon for rein- 
forcements — a stronger storming party, and 
heavier guns. Joined by the Mozuffer and 
Ferooz, we took the stockade in an hour, with- 
out a casualty. The other steamers, with the 
Serpent, returned forthwith to Rangoon, we 
remaining to burn the stockade. 

That was a dark night — no moon, and a 
cloudy sky ; but as we lay off Kemmendine, 
listening to the roar of our artillery at Rangoon, 
the booming of mortars, the ringing of tubes, the 
whizzing of rockets, the rattle of musketry, and, 
now and then, the hurrahs of British and the 
yells of Burmese, our landscape was all alight 
with fire-balls floating over the town, the burst- 
ing of shells around the tinkling tee of the 
Golden Dagon, and in the high seat of Boodh's 
unshaken calm— the sky redly uniformed in the 
reflection of Rangoon's lurid flames, the crack 
ling conflagration of the stockades, the chain 
of beacon-fires linking the northern hills. 

In the j ungle there was panic, and all its voices 
were up — tigers growled, and wild dogs ran 



112 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

howling to and fro. Wings, blacker than the 
darkness, flapped among the shadows heavily. 
Overhead there was a whispering as of many 
witches, and the Peguan nightingale shrieked 
with the tongues of all the angry Nats, and 
of the damned that fret in the midst of the 
great stone Silipatavi. 

At dawn, three Chittagong men, who had 
formerly been merchants of Rangoon, came out 
of the jungle, where they had been hiding since 
the bombardment began, and implored us to 
rescue them. Their worldly goods were all 
gone, they said — seized by the Woon, when 
they fled ; they were beggars now, and they 
trembled for their lives. Rangoon was taken 
— our people in the Pagoda, and the Burmese 
flying into the jungle. On the second day of 
the assault, the Governor, with his household 
and some favorites of his court, had escaped on 
elephants, burning villages in his flight, and 
slashing among his own people, in the wanton- 
est lust of blood. 

The Pluto came and confirmed the story — 
Rangoon was ours, and the British ensign fly- 
ing on the upper gallery of the Golden Dagon ! 



Rangoon is Ours. 113 

That afternoon the Purser and I landed at 
Kemmendine with a watering party — the village 
seemingly deserted, and picturesquely desolate. 
A few rods from the landing brought us to the 
one long, narrow street, of dirty, low-eaved 
bamboo huts, which, following the line of the 
shore, was floored with little black bricks, and 
roofed with multitudinous and various foliage, 
downhanging and dense. A pariah dog or two, 
skulking and spy-like ; a forgotten cat or two, 
singed and sorry-looking ; one famished mina, 
screaming from a cage, were all the inhab- 
itants. 

Two or three hundred yards from the land- 
ing, to the left, in the middle of the village and 
of the pavement, was the well from which our 
men filled their casks. To the right, and much 
nearer, was a shadowy banian grove, through 
which a whispering alley led up to a temple, 
many pinnacled and grotesquely carved, where- 
in was an ampitheatre of shelves, piled high 
with images — little and big, of wood and stone, 
and lead and plaster — of the Stagnant Calm. A 
rude paling inclosed the whole, and on the right 
was a thicket of thorny underbush. 



114 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

In the pavement before the porch was an- 
other well, with cord and bucket, and I staid 
to bathe amid the embowered beauty and cool- 
ness, and quiet and security. The Purser mount- 
ed guard, with a musket we had brought. 

Suddenly there was a stampede in the thick- 
et, and five Burmese, armed with muskets, 
broke through the palisade, at the poonghee- 
house, and came down on us — their breech- 
cloths, their top-knots, their shining, naked 
skins frightfully near to us. At the moment 
of their apparition my body-guard's back was 
turned to them ; he was marching down the 
alley, playfully going through the exercise; I 
was quite naked, and, of course, unarmed. The 
Purser, turning quickly, saw at once how it 
was. Leveling his musket, which had its bayo- 
net fixed, he ran at the fellows, at the same 
time shouting for our men — a vocal exercise in 
which I joined. The Burmese turned at once, 
and precipitately fled ; leaping the palisade and 
crouching low, they glided through the under- 
bush and disappeared. We returned to our 
party. 



Magnanimous ! 1 1 r 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MAGNANIMOUS ! THE STOCKADES OF RANGOON THE STREETS 

THE MACHINERY OF BOODHISM THE GOLDEN DAGON 

THE GREAT AND LITTLE BELLS BOODH AND " BACCY" THE 

INGATHERING YOUNG SHWAY-MADOO. 

But a few days had passed since the taking 
of Rangoon, when the late Woon — now an out- 
law, no better than a dacoit, without distinc- 
tion, without reverence, without authority, 
without followers (save a few desperadoes, 
who, having shared his crimes, and fearing to 
share his punishment, made a virtue of sharing 
his desperate flight) without abiding place, 
marking his drunken progress with indiscrimi- 
nate rapine and slaughter — had the insolence to 
send to General Godwin a deputation, with a 
flag of truce, to say : that the Governor of 
Rangoon addressed himself to the great Cap- 
tain of the Inglee Rajahs, because the Captain 
was a very rich and powerful man ; so, also, 
was the Governor of Rangoon, who acknow- 
ledged that the Inglee Rajahs had beaten him in 



n6 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

one great battle — undertaken when his omens 
were bad — with terrible loss on both sides. 
This, however, was but the first of three terrific 
engagements ; in the two that were yet to be 
fought, the Golden Foot would surely trample 
upon its enemies. Therefore, the Governor of 
Rangoon, entertaining no bitterness of resent- 
ment against the Inglee Rajahs, but only the 
magnanimity of an invincible warrior, gener- 
ously advised the rich and powerful Captain, 
Godwin Woon, to retire in time. To which the 
General's reply was more military than diplo- 
matic, and certainly extremely ungrateful : 

" Tell the impudent beggar to go to Sili- 

patavi ; I mean to hang him yet, even if I have 
to take him from among his women." 



Rambling through the streets of Rangoon, 
and around the Great Pagoda, observing the 
fortifications, I did not cease to wonder how it 
could ever have been taken. Surely, one 
thousand English or Americans would hold 
just such a place forever, against twenty 
thousand of their own countrymen. Yet the 
garrison of Rangoon numbered fifty thousand. 



The Golden Dagon. 117 

Shway-Dagoung, the Golden Dagon — an 
octagonal pagoda of solid masonry, without an 
opening, holding up its jingling coronal even 
with the spire of the proud St. Paul's, gilded 
from base to pinnacle, tarnishing in the rains 
of many wet, and glaring in the suns of many 
dry seasons — formed the centre of an area of 
fortification four miles square, and planned in 
this wise : The outer lines were marked by a 
stockade, having four equal sides, of four miles 
each, one side fronting on the river. Many 
small batteries flanked this at different points ; 
and the ground between it and the river, and on 
both sides, bristled with such vegetable bayo- 
nets as those we found at Kemmendine — short 
flinty bamboos, planted thickly, their sharp- 
ened points projecting some six or eight 
inches. These were for the benefit of storm- 
ing parties. Beside these, mines of gunpowder 
were discovered, ready to be sprung by means 
of trains conducted into the jungle. 

Within this largest stockade, which com- 
pletely encompassed the new town of Ran- 
goon — for the old town, along the river's edge, 
as it was a few months previous, had been 



n8 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

carried back, bodily as it were, two miles and 
set down around the Pagoda— were two others, 
the last or innermost, which was by far the 
strongest of the three, immediately enclosing 
the Dagon. These were, all alike, constructed 
of the heaviest teak timber, loop-holed every few 
yards — giant logs, from twenty to thirty feet 
high, with deep ditches, and bamboo chevaux- 
de-frise, such as I have described, in front, and 
solid embankments of brick and earth, inside 
and out. Within, were numerous deep trenches, 
like those of Kemmendine. 

Around and between the stockades, the 
ground was covered with villainous jun- 
gle, affording a perfect cover for Burmese mus- 
ketry in the day-time, and for tigers, dacoits, 
and vagabond dogs at night. 

Along the walls, in the ditches, on the plat- 
forms under the guns, our men found hundreds 
of Burmese bodies. The Governor had chained 
his gunners to their own engines, and so they 
were found dead. While the wives and young 
maidens brought powder, and the links of chain 
that were fed to the guns for want of proper 
shot, the aged, the crippled, and the babes 



The Streets. ng 

were penned trembling in the trenches, to an- 
swer with their lives for the courage and loy- 
alty of men whose fear was greater than their 
own, and who had only oppression to be faith- 
ful to. 

The only passage, then, through these con- 
centric lines of stockade, and so on, up to the 
Dagon, was by a paved causeway of two miles 
and a half, over recent bridges of logs thrown 
across ditches ; through gates where the anxi- 
ous regards of a dozen cannon were gathered in 
a focus ; through dim, barbaric streets, full of 
the devices of Boodhistic devilry and all man- 
ner of pitiful un-Christness — streets, once all 
bosky and picturesquely vista'd, now encum- 
bered with the wreck of war, and disfigured with 
the rubbish of haste confounded and panic- 
stricken ; past many a dark, mysterious poon- 
ghee-house, whose grotesque gods kept grim 
watch within, and whose portals were guarded 
by most hideous warders — staring creatures 
cut in stone, and in the mixed fashion of cock, 
crocodile and tiger. 

And so you reach the Golden Dagon, the 
pagoda of first importance in the empire, hav- 



120 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

ing, beneath its ponderous base, millions of ru 
pees in gold and silver and jewels, the offerings 
— partly voluntary, partly extorted— of millions 
of poor fanatics, trembling, and at their wits' 
end, between the dhars of their captains, and 
the curses of their priests. 

By a lofty flight of dark stone steps under a 
low roof fantastically sculptured, and between 
great balustrades, mottled green and black with 
moss and damps, whereon two swarthy croco- 
diles measure their monstrous length, their 
gaping jaws supported by colossal Nats, you 
mount to the upper of the two vast terraces 
which encircle the base of this proud monu- 
ment, reared to the Stagnant Calm. 

By a narrow gate you pass out upon the 
wide platform of the upper terrace, and there 
stands Shway-Dagoung in all his golden glory 
— acres of senseless shrines about his knees, 
and on his towering head, three hundred and 
thirty feet aloft, a crown of multitudinous tiny 
bells, swayed by many a playful breeze in 
gusts of silver tinkling. 

Lesser pagodas, griffins, sphynxes, and all 
manner of barbaric nondescripts, hold the 



The Great Bell. 121 

ground around. To the four "airts" four 
carved and pillared temples face, wherein are 
lodged the high company of Boodh. The 
eastern of these surpasses, in its arabesque 
cornices, triple roof, spiral columns, and airy 
spire, the dreams of the boy Solomon — -a gold- 
en throne, a temple all of gold. 

Near the pagoda, under a sacred canopy, 
still golden, of its own, from gilded beams 
hewn from the proudest teaks in Pegu, hangs, 
within two feet of the ground, the Great Dagon 
bell. Straining my arm from the shoulder 
under its vibrating rim, I could touch only 
with my finger-tips its inner edge ; yet never 
did my Lady's silver toilet-bell utter mellower 
music. Pali inscriptions and hieroglyphics 
chase its surface from shank to rim ; and a 
dozen funny demons of indescribable absurdity 
guard the portal of its lodge. 

To the Burmese these bells are the dearest 
objects of pride and veneration. At the dedi- 
cation of any pagoda of consequence, the people 
flock, from all the country round about, to 
the founding of its great bell, and cast into 
the molten mass, with eager devotion, bits 



122 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

of copper, brass, silver, and gold, and even 
jewels. The silver scabbards and gold betel 
boxes of the men ; the polished jars of house- 
wives ; the ear-rings and store of pretty bau- 
bles, much prized by coquettish maidens ; the 
armlets, anklets, and toelets of nautch girls ; 
even the small metal toys of the young chil- 
dren, and here and there a bit of shining foil 
called by a baby's name, are flung in without 
stint, that the Nats may be propitiated and the 
demons averted. 

Everywhere within the pagoda grounds 
lesser bells are to be seen, of a like costly com- 
position and almost unearthly sweetness of 
tone. Tongueless, all of them, and stationary, 
a blow on the rim from a joint of bamboo con- 
jures their melody. The hundreds of young 
pagodas which are gathered in the shadow of 
Shway-Dagoung, have, each, their tinkling coro- 
nets. Unlike the giants of their kindred, these 
little bells have tongues, from which light 
gilded leaves are hung to catch the wandering 
breeze ; and, from every landmark on the river, 
every headland of noticeable height, their songs 
come down forever. For the Burmese are 



Boodh and "Baccy." 123 

profuse in pagodas, and seem sincerely to exult 
in the labor, danger, and patience with which 
those shining jewels are flung up, by the hand 
of superstition, to the tops of apparently im- 
possible crags. 

During the first Burmese war the British 
would have transplanted the Great Dagon bell 
to London, but, in the effort to embark it, its 
great weight carried away the tackle ; it cap- 
sized the boat in which it had been shipped, 
and sank to the bottom of the river. The 
Burmese fished it out again and restored 
it to its sacred office ; and ever since, they 
have believed that so long as its voice can 
be heard in the land Burmah cannot be di- 
vided. 

But where was all the picturesqueness, all 
the " keeping" — where were the " calm, eter- 
nal eyes," when the genius of shops sat in the 
high seat of Boodh, and the " 18th Royal 
Irish" had their quarters at the head of the 
grand staircase, amid tall gilded columns and 
imperturbable, absent-looking giants of gods 
— pipe-clay abounding on their altars, and red 
coats and flannel shirts, short pipes and baccy- 



124 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

boxes, hanging around the necks of Guadma 
and his three forerunners ? 

And yet, even so soon, all the more harm- 
less portion of the Rangoon population — small 
traders and handicraftsmen, salt-dryers and 
boats-people — were flocking in by companies 
of thousands to reestablish themselves in their 
old places, inspired with confidence in British 
magnanimity and mercy, and eager to escape 
to foreign protection from the ruthless extor- 
tion and tiger-like blood-thirstiness of their 
native masters. For many days, looking from 
the upper terrace across the low-lying jungle, 
to where the silver skirts of the Salween spar- 
kled, we beheld the long-drawn procession of 
elephants and ponies, and oxen with carts, and 
men with parts of bamboo houses, and women 
with domestic utensils and rice, and little chil- 
dren with pigs, and fowls, and kittens — the 
happy march of a helpless barbarism bringing 
its tribute of trust and reliance to an all-sub- 
duing civilization. 

Before I close this chapter, I must say what 
I mean by " young pagodas." 

Twenty-four hundred years ago, two famous 



Young Pagodas. 125 

princes, brothers, on the eve of some stirring en- 
terprise, military or political, built, gilded, and 
consecrated a little pagoda — a mere " butcha," 
as they say in India, a brat, of some twenty feet 
or so, but perfect in his beautiful proportions as 
he is this day. Therefore they found favor with 
the Nats, and attained to power and proud dis- 
tinction. So, other Woons and princes and 
great captains made much of the young Shway- 
Madoo, and each in turn gave him, according 
to his means, one or two or three layers of 
bricks and stucco, and a new coat of gold over 
all, and a larger, finer, and more melodious 
tee; and thus he attained to his present exalted 
stature, and held up his head beside the highest 
in the land, and became the haughty Shway- 
Madoo Prah, the Golden Supreme of Pegu. 

And thus many pagodas, which are lofty and 
illustrious now, were once little fellows that 
might have stood erect inside the Great Dagon 
bell — so little, that the children who were 
learning to count could make a lesson of the 
bells in their tees. Sometimes, as happened to 
Shway-Dagoung, the growth of the young 
pagoda was secretly helped by the Nats, who, 



126 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

when pleased with the liberality and zeal of 
its founder, would contribute as much to the 
progress of the work in a single night as the 
pious builders of the shrine had been able to 
effect in a whole moon. 



The Lotos-Tanks. 127 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE LOTOS-TANKS— TESTING THE WATER— THE POONGHEE- 
HOUSE BLACK-ART. 

That May-day out-Julyed July, when we of 
the Phlegethon set out from Kangoon on an ex- 
cursion to head off the Dallah Woon, and him 
of Ingeboo, who were said to be somewhere 
up the Irrawaddi, levying on the villages and 
driving in recruits. Having instructions to 
ascertain on the way all the facilities of water- 
ing for the shipping and troops, and having 
almost empty casks ourselves, we dropped 
anchor next morning at a picturesque landing 
place in a quiet cove, where were a poonghee- 
house, some pagodas, and a numerous banian. 
In this quite deserted spot we found three 
small tanks, and a watering party was landed 

at once. 

We had been forewarned that in the first war 
it was the custom of the Burmese, fleeing 
before an enemy and deserting their villages, to 



128 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

poison their tanks with the juices of deadly 
plants, and accordingly I was ordered to test 
the water, and our thirsty crew to wait for my 
report. Now, in the vagueness of the best 
accounts I could get, the variety and strange- 
ness of the poisonous agents, and the absence 
of all needful appliances, a chemical test was 
an impossibility. Moreover, we had but one 
ration of water left, and the men had been 
working furiously under a parching heat. But 
I went to look at the tanks, and when I found 
their pure and innocent bosoms hiding under a 
green veil of broad lotos-leaves, and that Cleo- 
patra among flowers drowsily rocking her 
cheek on their ripples, and all around wearing 
an aspect of blessedness and self-sufficing 
beauty, I thought the physiological test would 
do. So I tossed off a bumper to the Daughter 
of Egypt, and retired to my state-room to make 
a sonnet about her before I died : 



As often as I'm with thee I recall 
A languid lotos nodding in a pool, 
A reverie of ripples, where a cool, 

Still tent of bamboo-shadows curtains all. 



The Poonghee-House. 129 

Hard by, a bulbul joins her " dying fall" 
To the low crooning of an evening breeze, 
Singing of slumber and soft Indian ease, 

To fold my sleeper in faint, sensuous thrall : 
Couched in the quiet of her beauty, fanned 

By unseen slaves of Queen Mab's retinue, 
Like a Sultana leaning on her hand, 

Whose dreams Haroun-al-Reschid's realm renew. 
Be thou my lotos, thine her gorgeous gleams — 
Thou maker and partaker of my dreams ! 

11. 

Most like a lotos in thy languid air- 
Most like a lotos in thy red and white— 
Not in the arrogance of gems bedight, 

But in the queenliness of being fair — 

Most like a lotos, that thy veins prepare 
Some subtle potion to enthrall the sense 
Of jaded wayfarers, and lift them hence, 

To bathe in oceans of empyrean air : 
The dusty Bedouin, alighting down 

From his fagged camel at a lotos bath, 

Straightway emparadised, his houri hath, 
Forgets the desert and his bandits brown. 

I lighted from my camel at thy door 

To kiss thee — must I dream for evermore ? 



The poonghee-house had evidently been a 
place of note. It had only one apartment, but 
that was of imposing dimensions, and furnished 
in a superior manner for a Burmese building. 
There were cornices elaborately carved, and 



igo Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

slender spiral pillars stained yellow — the sacer 
dotal color, appropriated by the priesthood for 
their sacred vestments and the adornment of 
religious houses, and strictly tabooed to every 
other class, however rich or powerful. There 
were no retiring rooms, no closets or curtained 
recesses ; a few rude, hard benches, without 
even the affectation of ornament or conveni- 
ence, the only couches. 

A part of the chamber at the back was 
divided off from the rest by a yellow curtain 
stretched across ; and within, on an elevated 
dais, also laid with yellow cloth, was a small 
cabinet, profusely carved and gilded, wherein 
was a resplendent image of the god, and several 
sacred volumes of great age, such as are espe- 
cially the charge of the higher poonghees or 
rahaans — -books in sacred parable and tradition, 
in astrology and the black art, in the science 
of charms and omens. The Captain's butler, a 
Hindostanee who had lived many years in Bur- 
mah, and was familiar with the written and 
spoken language, made prize of a volume of 
necromancy, which was regarded with ortho- 
dox horror by a Burmese servant who accom- 



Black-Art. 13 1 

panied him, so that the man refused to touch 
it, and as long as it remained in the boat con- 
tinued to mutter prayers and pour water on 
his head. 



132 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A PRIZE AND A PRISONER PLENIPOTENTIARY ABDOOLAH 

HIS CHARACTER AND COSTUME STICKS AND CHICKENS 

THE GREAT BATTLE OF PONTALONG. 

We soon got under way again. As we 
ascended, the river widened, and the channel 
followed the left bank. The right shore was 
thickly wooded, the trees overhanging the 
stream, and their lower branches often swing- 
ing in the water. 

Presently a small covered boat, like the 
family boats of the fishermen we had seen at 
every village, emerged from a narrow inlet 
in the right bank and pulled swiftly up the 
stream in the slack water, close under the trees 
and in their favorable shadow. Our natives 
were sent to hail it from the bridge with shouts 
and waving of white cloths — to call it along- 
side, that we might overhaul it for arms and 
news. 

Four stout fellows were in the bow laying 



A Prize and a Prisoner. 133 

out all their strength on their paddles, and a 
steersman was perched on the high stern. We 
could not distinguish their faces — the distance 
was too great ; nor could we decide whether 
there were others under the sampan. They 
gave no heed to our hailing, but pulled straight 
on, seeming not to turn their eyes or thoughts 
in our direction. A gun, already charged with 
grape, was fired across their bow ; the shot 
threw water over them and cut up the bank be- 
fore them. At once they dropped their pad- 
dles, and, leaping into the water, swam a few 
strokes ; then clambered up the bank and fled 
into the woods. With the impression that 
there might still be others concealed under the 
covering of mats, a few muskets were dis- 
charged — at first with blank cartridges, but 
afterward with balls, thrown tenderly over and 
around the boat — to dislodge them. But see- 
ing no sign of life, we sent one of our cutters 
to bring the canoe away. 

As the men came alongside towing their 
prize, their faces wore an almost foolish ex- 
pression, as much of shame as of pity. There 
were two paddles, some fishing poles and 



134 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

an empty rice basket. And under the awning 
were two brass bowls ; an earthen pot, in 
which was a handful of cold rice ; a roll of 
filthy mats ; a filthier garment that once was 
red, and might have been a woman's; a broken- 
hearted duck ; a desperate cock that fought 
like Horatius; the bleeding body of a white- 
haired man, far gone beyond his three-score- 
and-ten, whose temple had been pierced by a 
ball the devil must have guided ; and a creature 
with elf-locks whiter than his, whose portion 
in womankind was scarcely distinguishable — 
partly paralyzed and wholly idiotic — the for- 
lornest wretchedness I ever saw. 

We took her on board, and tried to make 
atonement with tenderness, but all kindness 
was lost upon her wandering wits. So we 
comforted the poor creature as best we could, 
and committed her, with ample provision for 
her present support, to the charge of some 
kind-hearted people at the first village we came 
to. 

This was a place of some size, called Ponta- 
long. Having waited there a day without see- 
ing or hearing from any citizen' of credit and 



Plenipotentiary Abdoolah. 135" 

renown, beadle or train-band captain, we sent 
Abdoolah to demand an explanation of such 
very sophisticated disrespect, and forthwith, bj^ 
dint of much bluster, a profusion of Company's 
buttons, some gold lace, and a pair of ship's 
pistols — which in his hands were not so harm- 
less as they looked — to bring off the head man, 
willy-nilly, with the necessary apologies, to 
say nothing of the poultry and plantains, the 
fish and mangoes. 

On such an embassy Abdoolah was in all his 
glory. His barbarian vanity made the most 
of the buttons and the lace, wherewith he 
glorified himself exceedingly, and filled the vul- 
gar minds of Pontalong w r ith special wonder. 
Though really a brave man, with strong sense as 
w r ell as cunning, he affected an extravagant con- 
tempt for the Burmese, and invariably played 
Thersites before them, though strongly sus- 
pected of mingling their blood with the Malay 
element in his veins. He had a great gift of 
rant, and heartily rejoiced in an opportunity, 
such as this, to display his talent for tearing 
passions to tatters. It was his pet boast that 
when once he got a Burman by the throat he 



136 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

could shake anything out of him, from red- 
legged ducks to rubies. And yet all this 
seemed no more than an amiable contempt, 
indulged in principally for the gratification of 
his own vanity. We could discover in his 
eccentricities no characteristic cruelty. I have 
even known him to display, on occasions, a 
highly Christian quality of kindness. 

Ever since that black day in the calendar 
of his heroic career, when his gallant navy, 
consisting of three rickety war-boats and the 
" Old Yaller," struck all its ragged flags at 
once to overpowering odds, he had served his 
gallant foes, with the accommodating ardor of 
a Swiss, in the complex capacity of pilot, inter- 
preter, bargain-maker, and brow-beater-gener- 
al ; and his loyalty was as admirable as his 
accomplishments. 

If, in holding on by " the great wheel when 
it went up hill," his adherence was prompted 
by the pure love of loot, as he called plunder, 
he had the rare candor to affect no more sen- 
timental motive, and we were sure of his 
staunchness so long as our crop of loot throve 
better than our enemy's. 



Abdoolah's Costume. 137 

Abdoolah's costume was picturesque; there 
is many a less striking portrait in the National 
Academy of Design. On his back he sported a 
pea-jacket, originally made for a very tall man, 
with very long arms and a very low waist, 
and remarkably narrow between the shoulders ; 
for Abdoolah had cut out a triangle from be- 
tween the shoulder-blades and spliced in a 
broad slice of Turkey-red — by which private 
bit of vanity he could be distinguished with a 
good glass at the distance of a mile. To the 
modest half-dozen of regulation buttons which, 
in the beginning, adorned this elaborate com- 
position, he had added two rows extraordinary 
of the same, with the lion on them, if any- 
thing, more rampant than usual. Somebody 
had given him a rusty epaulette, which, with a 
sharp eye to symmetry, he had hung on to his 
collar behind, precisely amidships. 

For his nether man he affected the Burmese 
costume, and ventilated his thighs in a breech- 
cloth freely adapted to the dog-star influences 
of the climate. On reaching his short, sturdy 
legs he became British again, and those brown 
pillars of the Abdoolah constitution were plant- 



138 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

ed — no doubt, for the sentiment — in a pair of 
uncommon Wellingtons. 

After this I need hardly say that Abdoolah 
was a chunk of a man, short, brawny, and 
tough. On his chest, which, between knocks 
and the weather was actually parti-colored, 
he had the scars of three old gashes, about 
which he told a different story every time you 
asked him how he got them. On his head — I 
had well nigh forgotten that — he sported a 
palm-leaf hat immensely wide in the brim, 
with three gold bands an inch or two apart, 
and a red rag sticking out at a hole he had 
made in the crown. You may complete his 
outfit with a broad black belt, clasped by a 
brass buckle as broad as one's hand, wherein 
were stuck a pair of ship's pistols and a dhar, 
more familiar to his hand than a cutlass. Then 
caricature his heels with a pair of brass spurs, 
into which he had been fooled by a sharp 
ensign, who, at the same time, duly knighted 
him Sir Bardolph Pistol for his splendid swag- 
ger — and you must acknowledge he was a 
likely man to teach the City Fathers of Ponta- 
long good manners. 



The Three Citizens. 139 

As for his face, it was a hard face, a scarred, 
and battered, and defaced face, a face that had 
been much used and much abused, that " knew 
all about that," and had made up its mind, and 
would stand no nonsense — such a face as you 
might make by taking the beauties of feature 
and expression of Rough and Ready, Billy 
Bowlegs, and Sir Charles Napier, and mixing 
them together. 



In a little while Abdoolah returned, sticking 
out all over, and, to a stranger, seeming not 
in the least inclined to laugh. Three uncom- 
fortable-looking individuals, of whom it was 
hard to say whether they were most dirty or 
scared, followed after the jingling of his spurs. 
These pretended to be bewildered by the scene 
at which they unwillingly assisted, and begged 
to be told why the fierce General in the 
breech-cloth and buttons had commanded their 
presence, and by what wonderful dispensation 
such pariahs as they had attracted the attention 
of so tremendous a Rajah. 

They were told we were in want of fire- 
wood and fowls, and that we expected Ponta- 



140 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

long to provide both without delay. They 
swore they could not see what they had to do 
with that; that they were three of the most 
miserable of men, who barely managed, with 
infinite pains, to keep body and soul together ; 
that for their own funerals, if they died that 
hour, they had neither faggot nor pullet where- 
with to burn their bodies or pay the poonghee ; 
that the rich men of the town had gone off with 
the Dallah Woon, and taken all the sticks and 
chickens with them. They implored permis- 
sion to return to the miserable obscurity from 
which they had been dragged, no doubt by 
mistake. 

But the real ragamuffins of Pontalong — they 
who had never been seized of faggot or fowl in 
their lives except they stole it — protested vo- 
ciferously, as they squatted about the deck, 
that Abdoolah's prisoners were, in spite of 
their pathos and dirt, the true G-ilpins of the 
place, men of substance as well as renown — 
as, indeed, the superior quality of their tattoo- 
ing betrayed — who counted their poultry by 
the hundred, and their fuel by the cord. So 
Abdoolah stormed exceedingly, and patted his 



Sticks and Chickens. 141 

dhar, and said " damn" a great many times— 
that potent monosyllable before which all ob- 
durate barbarians soon learn to bow— and led 
his pathetic friends to a thirty-two pounder, 
and demanded the sticks and chickens in its 
name. Whereupon his victims confessed to 
the ; r hen-roosts and wood-piles, and consented 
to fill our coops and bunkers forthwith, pro- 
vided we would assist in a happy plan of theirs 
for the saving of their heads. 

They made it plain to us, that if they con- 
tributed "aid and comfort to the enemy"— if 
they yielded to a forcible forage without resist- 
ance—their heads would fly from their shoul- 
ders immediately on the reappearance of their 
Myosugi or Mayor, who would return as soon 
as the ship left. Therefore they besought our 
aid in getting up a mock fight that night. 
They would bring off the wood and poultry in 
the afternoon, as much as we wanted; and 
when the moon rose we must fire into the 
town as good-naturedly as possible, and they 
would fire back, with a jinjal and some mus- 
kets, in a perfectly friendly manner. 

This funny programme was duly performed, 



142 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

with brilliant effect ; and the best of all was, 
they borrowed some of our powder for the 
occasion. Soon after dark — -the fire-wood and 
fowls, as well as some pigs, and fish, and 
mangoes, having been shipped (and liberally 
paid for), in the midst of much merry-making 
with the pretty mimas, who visited us con- 
fidingly, the free interchange of toasts in rum 
and wine, and no end of mutual admiration — 
all the petroleum of Pontalong was brought 
into requisition, and a general illumination 
opened the spectacle. Then a mixed herd of 
citizens, abundantly greasy, but not at all fat, 
headed by Abdoolah's confidential friends, and 
having in their midst the biggest white flag the 
town could raise, as if, still timid, to signify 
that their friendly sentiment was in propor- 
tion to its dimensions, ran down to the bank, 
yelling, and firing their muskets in the air. 

We opened the attack with one of our broad- 
side guns — of course with blank fire— and im- 
mediately their old jinjal uttered its small roar. 
For nearly an hour the set-to was smart and 
noisy. The moon was full, and very bright ; 
the stars were out in unusual strength ; the 



The Battle of Pontalong. 143 

illumination by torches and bon-fires was 
brilliant, and with a few blue-lights we con- 
tributed largely to the splendor of the scene. 
Altogether, our grand engagement at Ponta- 
long was an uncommonly showy affair. 

When we had burned as much powder as 
we thought it necessary to expend for such a 
moral impression, we permitted our fire to be 
silenced, and retreated precipitately, according 
to arrangement ; whereat fresh bursts of shout- 
ing, dancing, gun-firing, and general glorifying 
on shore. 

Let us hope that when the Myosugi re- 
turned, he treated our friends to the thanks of 
the city and a public dinner, made heroes of 
them off-hand, and postponed their decapita- 
tion, which was pretty sure to happen one day 
or another. 



144 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XYII. 

OUR MIRACLES-THE FISHERMAN'S BUTCHA THE TRIBUTE OP 

ROTTEN EGGS BLOWING-UP A POONGHEE. 

Many a poor wounded prisoner whom our 
surgeons had made whole again before he was 
set free, had returned to his native village with 
a wonder-moving story of the skill and kind- 
ness of the Inglee doctors ; so the fame of our 
miracles had spread from Rangoon to Prome. 

The poonghees practice no surgical arts ; the 
halt Burman must go halt forever, and the poor 
bazaar girl, struck by a shot from the musket 
of a dacoit, if she does not die outright, must 
carry the ball till her time comes. Neverthe- 
less, they believe that however grave the 
wound, however prostrating the shock, if by 
any conjuring they can get at the ball, so as to 
see and feel it and toss it in their hands, they 
will surely recover. Thus, it was our gun-shot 
practice which most astonished them, inspiring 
them indeed with superstitious faith, and a 



The Fisherman's Butcha. 145 

reverence akin to worship — this regard pre- 
vailing among them all, from the most peace- 
able fisherman to the most murderous dacoit. 

I have more than once got down info a boat 
alongside to extract one of our own balls from 
the body of a tattooed ruffian who, a few 
minutes before, was war-dancing and hooting, 
and flourishing his dhar and blazing away with 
his musket at our ship, and who now, on 
catching the lead in his ugly skin, with touch- 
ing confidence came begging me to take back 
the bullet. True, if the fellow had got his de- 
serts he would have been swung up at the 
yard for a scarecrow. But what could we do? 
There was no dealing "judgmatically," as my 
countrymen say, with such an appeal to the 
hospitalities : you lost sight of the wholesale 
thief and kidnapper and Thug, and saw in the 
fellow only a helpless, beseeching animal, crip- 
pled and moaning, and showing us its wound. 

At Yangeenchinyah I had a dozen patients. 
A fisherman and his wife brought off their 
butcha, a beautiful child, who, in playing with 
another baby Burman, had fallen down the 
high bank and dislocated his thigh. The in- 



14ft Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

jury was recent, and the reduction easy. As 
the deck happened to be in great confusion at 
the time, 1 had my patient removed to the 
" bridge" between the paddle-boxes, and operated 
there. Young as the boy was, he displayed 
much of the savage's temper under physical 
suffering, and bit and scratched rather than 
cried. His mother remained on the deck below 
in an agony of impatience, but with no doubt 
or fear. Although we urged her repeatedly to 
come up to her child, she resolutely refused — 
"it was not for her to stand above the heads 
of all the Inglee Rajahs." 

Another was a poor chatta-maker, who was 
quite blind with ulcerated corneas. His wife 
paddled him off in a little canoe, and I found 
them squatting together under the rail, close 
by the gangway, waiting to be noticed. With 
perfect faith and patience and tenderness, she 
sat holding his hand between her own; or with 
child-like simplicity manifesting her solicitude, 
and her anxiety to get me interested in the 
case, she rattled away without a pause, and 
with an infinite variety of gestures, never per- 
ceiving, never understanding, that her pretty 



The Tribute of Rotten Eggs. 147 

prayer was all lost on me. But I did my best 
for the sufferer then, and left careful instruc- 
tions with the most intelligent of his neighbors, 
as well as a supply of medicines, for his future 
treatment* 

Five weeks after that, being in Fangeen- 
chinyah again, I was rewarded by finding him 
wonderfully improved: the sight of one eye 
was quite restored, and the other was recover- 
ing rapidly. Poor follow! his gratitude was 
not very demonstrative; but his delighted wife 
embraced and kissed my feet, and laughed and 
cried together, arid presently, running off in 
high excitement, returned — with a basket of 
rotten eggs. She bad saved them for me ever 
since the morning he could first see the light. 
Good creature! to her they were not rotten, 
they were only saved — she perceived them with 
the nose of her heart. I told her they wore 
very nice, and i hope J thought they wore. 

At Sangeenchinyah wo witnessed the obse- 
quies of a poonghee, not the least curious of Bur- 
mese ceremonies. The defunct bad been 
among the most reverend of the yellow cloth 
in Pegu, and bis funeral called out the town in 



148 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

extraordinary preparations. It had been just 
fifteen months since he died, and all that time 
the material part of him had been lying em- 
balmed in a carved, painted and gilded coffin, 
under three white umbrellas, on a high staging 
hung with yellow paper, in the principal poon- 
ghee-house. 

The process of embalming him was very 
Egyptian : First of all they steeped him in 
honey, and left him to soak for some weeks ; 
next, they took out his " insides," and filled 
up the hole with all manner of spices ; then 
they encased him in a sheathing of wax to 
make him air-tight, and over that they payed 
on a layer of lac, and over that again a coat of 
gold-leaf; and when they had made him all 
splendid and shining, they left him on his 
staging, under his umbrellas, to dry. Finally, 
by his side, they built a kneeling elephant of 
thin wood, paper, and glue, and fastened the 
coffin on its back. 

And after many months, when the stars, and 
the cards, and the mango seeds, and the eyes 
of the yellow owl, had appointed a lucky day, 
they called all the people from round about to 



The Golden Mummy. 149 

see him start for Nieban. The people came, 
and brought gongs, drums, horns, and flowers , 
there were singing boys and dancing maidens 
with fireworks — every street its own fireworks. 
And rockets, wheels, and fountains were stuck 
thickly on the sides and backs of elephants, 
oxen, horses, and bears, of wood, paper, and 
glue. 

Then they laid the golden mummy in its 
golden coffin, and hoisted it, elephant and all, 
atop of the staging under the white umbrellas; 
and they mounted the whole upon wheels, 
and dragged it forth outside the town, to an 
open place they had cleared in the jungle with 
fire, banging their gongs the while, beating 
their drums, blowing their horns, waving their 
flags — the priests howling, and the boys sing- 
ing, and the demi-nude girls dancing, the 
young men flourishing their paddles and dhars, 
and the old women scolding for alms. 

All the next day they were letting off the 
fireworks, — street vieing with street in the pro- 
fusion, brilliancy, and fantastic variety of its 
pyrotechnics ; for much fizzing and whizzing and 
spitting and cracking was thought pleasing to 



ljo Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

the Nats and good for the soul of Poonghee. On 
the third day, which was the last, all the people 
were distributed in two equal parties, and many 
ropes, both long and strong, being attached to 
opposite sides of the car, they pulled against 
each other for the possession of Poonghee. 

Drumming, gonging, tooting, singing, jump- 
ing, howling, laughing, scolding, waving flags 
and flourishing dhars, they tugged and swayed 
and tugged, then fell and were dragged awhile, 
then rose again and tugged, then rested and 
panted, and then tugged again. And all this 
time recruits from other villages were strag- 
gling in to swell the ranks of this side or of that, 
and to make the strain and struggle wilder. 

At last some of the ropes on one side gave 
way with a loud report. A thousand screaming 
people at once went down on their backs, roll- 
ing over each other, spluttering and wrig- 
gling to disengage themselves ; and the other 
side, with a sky-splitting shout of victory, ran 
off with Poonghee, dragging, on their feet or 
their backs or their bellies, the few of the dis- 
comfited party who still held on by the ropes 
that were left. 



Blowing-up a Poonghee. 151 

Then, coffin, staging, elephant and all, they 
carried Poonghee and set him down inside 
a bamboo house, erected for the occasion, and 
hung around with white and yellow flags ; 
and they dashed the walls with petroleum, and 
laid combustible matter all about the room, 
on the staging and in the coffin. Then they 
stood off and fired rockets at the whole ; till 
presently roaring flames burst forth, Poonghee 
went up to Nieban in the blaze, and everybody 
else went home. 



152 Up and Down the IrrawaddL 



CHAPTER XVIII 



THE BOODH. 



Sangermano describes Nieban as a state of 
perpetual ecstacy, "wherein those who attain 
it are not only free from the pains and troubles 
of this life— from death, illness, and old age — • 
but are abstracted from all sensation ; they 
have no longer a thought or a desire/' 

By taking refuge only with the Boodh ; 
by approaching him with pleasing offerings ; 
by glorifying him with high hymns and elo- 
quent praises; by keeping your eyes fixed for- 
ever on the ecstatic, imperturbed abstraction of 
his gaze ; by striving always and without faint- 
ing for the highest ; by meditating and repeat- 
ing eternally the three mystic words, Aneizz'a, 
Doecha, Anatta ; you may reach this Meban 
through a milky way of worlds. 

The years it will take you to make the jour- 
ney may be as few as the days you have lived 
—may be as many as the drops of rain that fall 



The Boodh. 153 

over all the world in seven seasons. You are 
climbing a mountain of round, rolling stones, 
and on many a smooth sin your foot may slip 
and cast you to the bottom. As often as you 
fall you must be born again, as often as you 
rise ; and your new state among animate things 
will be as the depth of your fall, as the height 
of your exaltation. From the power and be- 
atitude of a prince among the Nats, you may 
descend to the crawling nuisance of a louse. 
From out the fiery, howling centre of Silapatavi, 
you may rise to the infinite hush and moonlight 
of Nieban— - but step by step, and every step a 
new birth ; through Ammutzi, the place of 
beasts and creeping things; through Preitta, 
the place of sorrow ; and Assuriche, the place 
of anger, heart-burnings, and blows ; and Niria, 
the place of extreme fire and extreme cold, with 
Silapatavi at the heart of it. 

Guadma had lived in four hundred millions 
of worlds before he was born into this. Imme- 
diately on emerging from the womb of the 
Maha-Mai, he said : " Now am I born for the 
last time — next comes Nieban !" 

Then the Boodh that had sat on the throne of 



154 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

trance five thousand years closed his eyes and 
dissolved, and the wishless calm became Guad- 
ma's, and Guadma became the fourth Boodh — 
the Incomparable; the Supreme; Teacher of 
the Three Worlds, of Gods, Men, and Devils; 
the World's Compassionating, Divine Friend ; 
Lord and Comforter of Sanka (Ceylon); the 
Incomprehensible; Lord of the Divine kSages; 
Deity of the Felicitous Advent ; Illuminator of 
the World ; Maker of Light ; Prince of Healers ; 
Supreme Protector, who has made vacant the 
mansions of distress ; Scholar, Sage, whose un- 
derstanding is pure and brilliant ; who is cele- 
brated in the three worlds; who is profound 
in the three kinds of science ; who hath the 
thirty-two characteristic signs complete ; who 
hath memory of all things, with discernments 
and fore-knowledge ; who, with tranquil mind, 
cleareth the troubled times — Muni ! whose 
heart is at rest, who hath suffered much, who 
resteth ! 

For my part, I am satisfied to believe that 
the devout Boodhist, who, maintaining the 
eternally uninterrupted concatenation, has at- 
tained to the supreme presence — and the good 



The Boodh. 155 

and faithful Christian servant who, by the 
merit of faith and works, hath entered into the 
joy of his Lord, kneeling, hand-in-hand, at the 
foot of the throne, will see in Him who sitteth 
on the right hand, this, his Christ, and that, his 
Guadma. 

A devoted missionary, Mr. Malcolm, said of 
Boodhism : "In almost every respect it seems 
to be the best religion which man has ever 
invented." And when, at Doonoobyoo, I asked 
a poonghee : " What is Boodh?" he answered : 
" Boodh is yon, and I, and all men ; when you 
are I, and I am you, and both are at rest, that 
is Boodh." I think I understood him. 



156 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

DOONOOBYOO — THE GRAVE OF THE MAHA BANDOOLA— HIS 
TALIPOT TREE HIS PLUTARCH THE STORY OF ZINGUZA. 

At Doonoobyoo, whither we were now go- 
ing, the Maha Bandoola, Burmah's adored hero, 
the man of flying marches — who, after he had 
defeated Captain Noton at Ramos in 1824, swore 
he would march on and take London, swore 
he would swoop down on Calcutta and bring 
away the Governor-General in fetters to Ava, 
and was actually provided by the Golden Foot 
with chains of gold for that purpose — at Doo- 
noobyoo, where, in great force, and with a 
body-guard of " Invulnerables," he had made a 
stand, in 1825, to oppose Sir Archibald Camp- 
bell on his way to Prome, and drive him back 
to Rangoon, the illustrious Bandoola was killed 
by a shell, dying as a great captain should. 

In his answer to General Willoughby Cot- 
ton's summons to surrender, he had written his 
own epitaph in one of the most fameworthy of 



Doonoobyoo. 157 

military laconics : "If you wish to see our 
pagodas, come as friends and I will show them 
to you ; if you come as enemies — Land !" 

But now Doonoobyoo was a half-deserted 
village, an innocent hamlet, whither, seem- 
ingly, the outcry of war and the smoke of the 
burning had never come. Not a stockade, not 
a trench, not a jinjal, not a dhar! neither gold 
umbrella nor red flag was there. When we 
asked " the oldest inhabitant," who hobbled 
out to offer us the hospitalities of the city, 
and show us the public buildings, why the 
chief of the district had not erected stockades 
and thrown a brave army into the place, to 
fight us for the honor of the Great Bandoola, 
he said : "What is there here to fight for? — 
a poonghee-house, a grave, and a recollection." 
Historic Doonoobyoo could take care of itself. 

And in the midst of the old lines which 
Bandoola himself had made, between ditches 
green and slimy with stagnant water, or quke 
choked with rubbish from the ruined wall, he 
showed us a solitary mound of broken bricks, 
a disordered pile, with sprouting weeds and 
grass, its base supported by three inverted jin- 



l $8 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

jals, and its top crowned with an old British 
shell — a more classic monument for a soldier 
than many an elaborate design contributed by 
the pencil of refined art to the Pere-la-Chaises 
of the world. 

Above it a talipot-tree, a tall, straight, slen- 
der shaft, nodded high in air its gracefully- 
drooping plume. Bandoola had planted it 
with his own hand, even with Sir Archibald's 
bugle-call in his ears ; and he promised that, if 
he fell and died there, as he surely would if 
the Nats forsook him in his hour, he would 
come as bird or serpent, when the fire 
war-boats were at Rangoon, to watch in its 
branches for their smoke, far down through all 
the windings of the golden-fountained Irra- 
waddi ; and no harm from Inglee Rajahs, nor 
any foreign foe, should come to his beloved 
Doonoobyoo, so long as the plume of that tali- 
pot nodded in the sun. 

The old man pointed to its crown and smiled. 
Nor was his faith shaken, if he lived till Febru- 
ary, 1853, to see Captain Loch's force caught 
in ambuscade and all but cut to pieces by Nya- 
Myat-Toon, the jungle chief of Doonoobyoo. 



Bandoola's Plutarch. 159 

As a crowning mark of his distinguished con- 
sideration, our venerable friend brought from 
some inner temple of the poonghee-house, and 
reverently opened before us, a curious volume 
which he said had once been the favorite read- 
ing of Bandoola. 

About a hundred leaves of the smooth white 
palmyra, written upon on both sides, in the 
round Burmese character, with a sharp-cutting 
stylus, and gilded on the margins, were held 
evenly and firmly together between thick 
covers of sandal-wood, lacquered and gilded. 
The surface formed by the edges of these 
leaves when the volume was closed was paint- 
ed a flaring red, in the style of some old 
English books, and further embellished with 
designs in black, representing military objects, 
such as flags, dhars, lances, and helmets. A 
hole at either end completely perforated the 
volume, through which yellow cords of silk 
were passed, and held together by means of a 
golden tag and button a few inches from the 
cover, so as to allow the leaves to be turned 
without being separated. 

The old man explained to us, through the 



l6o Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

captain's servant, Jacob, a most fluent inter- 
preter—and, for a Bengalee, a person of rare 
intelligence — that the book was a collection 
of true stories in Burmese history, of heroes, 
famous generals and illustrious favorites, either 
legitimately of the blood royal, or adopted 
and cherished in the confidence of the Golden 
Foot. 

We asked for a taste of this Burman Plu- 
tarch's quality. So, sitting together on Ban- 
doola's grave under the talipot — we choosing 
the seat for the sentiment, and the venerable 
spokesman for Doonoobyoo, far from objecting, 
seeming rather to be flattered by the choice — 
the old man read to us, Jacob interpreting 
with astonishing closeness and facility, 

THE STORY OF ZINGUZ.A.. 

Shembuan Prah, the Unlucky,, had made 
his last blunder and died just when he was 
needed most; so his scapegrace son, Zinguza, 
the Scamp, was lord of the Golden Foot, and 
Boodh-descended mounter of the White Ele- 
phant. 

At once he turned tb*e palace of a thousand 



The Story of Zinguza. 161 

kings into a place of orgies, and made wild riot 
and obscene feasts, boisterous and unbounded, 
in the high seat of Alompra, the Vowed to 
Budd'ha. To crafty and unscrupulous minis- 
ters, and servile, treacherous courtiers, he left 
the administration of the laws, the execution 
of wholesome measures of reform, the collec- 
tion of the revenues, the disbursement of the 
public moneys, the dispensation of justice, the 
rewarding of such as had deserved well of the 
State, the punishment of offenders. 

To the evil-minded and cunning Mentara- 
gyee, to the ambitious Momien, to the foolish 
Paongoza, he said: "Make war or peace, build 
or burn, spend or gather, kill or spare; only 
leave me to my mimas (women) and my 
' strangers' drink ;' my players, and my gam- 
bling, and my chess ; my hunting and fishing ; 
my processions and my fireworks; my ele- 
phant-fights ; my fencers and racers and wrest- 
lers ; my dancers and puppets ; my music, and 
my mimas, and my strangers' drink. Rule 
you, and I will make merry." 

And so he did, and all Ava murmured; 
while Pegu, greatly rejoicing, began to sharpen 



162 Up< and Down the Irrawaddi. 

her dhar and think on her old king, Beinga- 
Della, that was murdered. 

Then Momien, that was cousin to the king, 
said : " My right is better than his. It is I 
who should have the Golden Foot ; it is I who 
should sit in the howdah of the White Ele- 
phant, that feasteth from golden plate and 
sleepeth on cloth of gold." 

And the evil-minded, crafty Mentaragyee 
said: " Aye— only wait." 

And presently Zinguza called together his 
hunters and fishers, his wrestlers and fencers 
and racers, his players and his puppets, and 
his musicians — them with the seven-stringed 
harps, and them with the tzeings of seven 
drums, and them with the kyay-wyngs of 
seven gongs, and them with the cymbals and 
bells and horns— and his mimas, the fairest 
and warmest; with store of rare viands and 
betel and pipes, and dream-drug from over 
the China border, and strangers' drink from 
the Inglee Rajahs at Bassein. And they 
sailed in golden barges between the bamboo 
shadows to Keoptaloum, the lotos-floored, 
twelve leagues away, to abide many days, 



The Story of Zinguza. 163 

debauched, panting, drunken-eyed, incestuous, 
stupefied. 

Then Momien, the Ambitious, crept at night 
to the chamber of the king, that was all disor- 
dered, as when last he romped there in his 
royal robes and tumbled among his women, 
making tipsy sport with the sceptre and the 
crown. And Momien stole away the golden- 
velvet robe and hid it in a ditch without the 
gates, and went and called Mentaragyee, the 
Crafty. And they two made a rendezvous and 
gathered there their friends, and all the con- 
spirators that were with them, beside a great 
force of dacoits, won by the promise of plunder. 

So, when the night was very dark, Momien 
clad himself in the golden-velvet robe, and 
came to the gate and knocked, and bade the 
guards open in the name of the king. And no 
sooner were the gates flung open, than Mo- 
mien and Mentaragyee, and all their wicked, 
traitorous crew, rushed in and took the city 
and the palace, slaying many, many people 
even while they slept ; and they sent off swift 
runners and cunning swordsmen to take Zin- 
guza, and slay him also. 



164 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

But the evil tidings had reached Zinguza by 
some who, flying that dreadful night, had made 
their way straight to him ; and he broke away 
from his women, and fled across the river to 
Chagaing, over against Ava. Immediately, 
Momien and the evil-minded Mentaragyee be- 
sieged him there, so that his courage failed 
him, and he would fain have escaped to Cassay, 
to seek asylum with the Munnipoora Rajah. 
But when his mother — the aged widow of 
Shembuan Prah, the Unlucky, whom he had 
left in his palace at Ava, and who now, having 
fallen into the bloody hands of Mentaragyee, the 
Evil-minded, must die — heard that Zinguza 
would save his life by such a slave's flight, she 
found means of sending to him a secret messen- 
ger, to say : " My son, thy blood is black and 
bad, and thy life hath been a shame and a ruin. 
Better die a king in the precincts of thine own 
royal palace, even though thou fall by the dhar 
of a Peguan dog, than live a beggar and a 
coward at the court of a ragged dacoit." 

When Zinguza heard the words of his mother, 
the blood of Alompra was stirred within his 
veins. He clad himself in the garb of a simple 



The Story of Zinguza. 165 

gentleman, and, followed only by a single 
slave, got into a small fishing-boat and pushed 
straight across to Ava. Never staying nor 
turning back, he strode proudly to the great 
gate and demanded admittance ; and when the 
guards challenged him and bade- him give his 
name and errand, he answered : "Zinguza nam- 
dogy-yeng Prah"— " it is Zinguza, your lawful 
lord!" 

Then the guards, astonished, bewildered, 
flung open the great gate, and Zinguza with 
his slave passed in, looking neither to the right 
hand nor the left, nor accosting any man, but 
silently marching up the paved way, in the 
middle of it, straight to the palace ; and all the 
people fell back before the royal outlaw, and 
many there were that made, yet did not make, 
salaam. And so he reached the lower wicket 
of the palace, but his name had gone before 
him, and Mentaragyee, the Evil-minded, stopped 
the way. 

And Zinguza cried: "Thief! let me pass; 
I come to take mine own, and rule it too, at 
last!" Mentaragyee answered not a word, but 
he snatched a dhar from the hand of an officer, 



i66 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

and with a quick, cruel stroke cut Zinguza 
across the bowels, so that he fell down there 
and died. 

And all the people said the Scamp was a god 
after all. 



Of such traditions came the inspirations and 
aspirations of the Maha Bandoola. The old 
man smiled complacently at the end of his 
story, as much as to say, " So Burmah, also, 
hath her heroes and her history, you perceive." 
So too, thought I, has the Choctaw Nation ; 
but neither the breech-cloth nor the scalp-lock, 
neither the tattoo nor the war-paint, neither 
the dhar nor the tomahawk, has left marks 
in mounds or caverns which the slate-pencil 
of a Yankee schoolmaster shall not scratch 
out. 

At Moulmein a "Mission Press" prints the 
New Testament in Burmese ; at Rangoon a 
Baptist Eliot teaches the Christian catechism 
to the Karens, in a tongue for which he helped 
to invent a written character and an alphabet. 
I think the materials for the History of Burmah 



The "Mission Press." 167 

are to be found in the plans of the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions — 
that Christ will be the hero there before Ban- 
doola is forgotten. From Mr. Vinton's school- 
house door the Golden Dagon looks shaky. 



1 68 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XX. 



SHELLING THE WOONS. 



Twenty miles above Doonoobyoo, at a spot 
where the narrow, shaded pass of the river ab- 
ruptly expanded into a wide range of flat pad- 
dy fields, bounded on every side by woods, our 
little steamer suddenly ceased her busy pad- 
dling and stood still, as though astonished. 

A remote, multitudinous murmur, with now 
and then reverberations and clangor, as of dis- 
tant thunder, came over the plain to us from 
the east, and with the glass we could see a 
moving darkness, like the shadow of a cloud, 
on the young rice — that was all. Then we 
crept up nearer, making no smoke, and pray- 
ing that the noise of our paddles might not 
betray us yet; and presently we discovered a 
great flashing and sparkling over all the moving 
shadow, and the far-away thunder acquired a 
brazen quality, and the multitudinous murmur 
was as of many men. 

Nearer and nearer, plainer and plainer, and 



Shelling the Woons. 169 

—By Jove, it was ! — an army with elephants, 
horsemen and wagons, banners and gongs and 
cymbals, brazen helmets, gold umbrellas, flash- 
ing spears! 

The Woons of Dallah, Martaban, and Inge- 
boo, with four thousand men, and gathering as 
they went, were on their way down from 
Pro me to Eangoon. Leading the array, three 
stately elephants marched, bearing the Woons 
in gilded howdahs under gold umbrellas ; and 
on the painted cloth, behind each howdah, 
knelt two body-servants, one with the betel- 
box and drinking-cup, another with the fan. 
Next came five lesser elephants, bearing bag- 
gage and arms, and more servants ; and behind 
these, twelve stately beasts again, ridden by the 
sons and nephews of the Woons, with other 
young noblemen and officers. 

After the elephants came horsemen — or 

rather say ponymen — to the number of three or 

four hundred ; tall fellows, without stirrups, 

their long, brown legs dangling near the 

ground, gilded helmets on their heads, green 

jackets, red breech-cloths. Each had a long 

dhar suspended from his neck by a red cord, a 
8 



I jo Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

slender lance of reed in his right hand, an ill- 
conditioned musket across his back. 

Then followed the bangers of gongs and cym- 
bals, and the blowers of horns, and the war- 
dancers, and boasters, and "attitude-strikers," 
and strong men. 

After these came the general camp, the sut- 
lers, pioneers and all — the common herd of va- 
gabonds and mischief-making scoundrels. The 
oxen with wagons, and the hostages, brought 
up the rear. 

Drawn out in imposing array, with martial 
flourish and hubbub, they slowly swept across 
the plain — the feet of the elephants, the legs of 
men and horses, and the low wooden wheels of 
the carts, half hidden in the waving paddy. I 
think their first intimation of our proximity 
was the boom of our bull-ring guns — which at 
first were not charged for so long a range — and 
the bursting of two shells in quick succession 
in the rice on their right, where they had fallen 
short. Before they could recover from the su 
perstitious consternation into which our fiery 
apparition and the stroke of those thunder-bolts 
had thrown them, we were in among them with 



Shelling the Woons. 171 

our biggest bombs— into their very midst, down 
upon the backs of the elephants, between the 
legs of the horses and oxen, and right among 
the leaping, falling, flying, yelling herd of 
thieves and scamps. 

The act was soon played out — the grand 
finale began with the first shot. The scream 
of the steam-whistle, joined to the crash of the 
guns, made the panic and the ruin complete. 
Five or six elephants toppled and descended 
Avith reverberations, while a dozen umbrellas, 
gold and white, with yellow arms and legs 
and streaming white cloths attached, went fly- 
ing through the air. The rest broke through 
the tumultuous terror, down-bearing, tram- 
pling, crushing, lashing with their trunks, 
rolling forward or swaying from side to side, 
rebounding from monstrous jostles, then rock- 
ing for a while and almost overtoppling, like 
mountainous icebergs in collision. Then, 
squealing like Titanic pigs, they thundered 
across the plain to the cover of the woods, 
and tore off golden howdahs and miserable 
men against trunks and low branches, and 
vines like cables. 



\"J2 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

Some scores of horses, falling in the first 
discharges, rolled over their bewildered riders, 
kicked a little, and then lay quiet. Two hun- 
dred more went scampering madly everywhere, 
toward us no less than away, the long, naked 
legs of their riders making streaky wakes in 
the rice. The ox-carts were overturned, and 
the hapless, helpless creatures that dragged 
them lay crippled and bellowing. As for the 
foot-men and the " general camp," they got 
their unconditional discharge. Some went 
home; some went to Preitta, the place of sor- 
row; some to Niria, the place of the damned. 
Either was better than going to Ava. 

As for us, we had no flag of truce to receive, 
no dead to bury, no prisoners to exchange ; so 
we turned and paddled back again, some of us 
thinking we had done a fine thing, others — 
not. 



Our Convoy. 173 



CHAPTER XXI. 

OUR CONVOY— THE DACOITS' AMBUSH LYNCHING FRA DIAVOLO 

THE WOUNDED WOMEN THEEN-GYEE. 

At Yangeenchinyah, on our return, a cheer- 
ing scene awaited us. 

The river was quite bridged across with more 
than seven hundred of the covered boats of the 
country. Huddled under the bank from one 
end of the town to the other, and tethered to 
stakes on the edge of the channel, they were 
filled with the women and children of poor vil- 
lagers, mostly Peguans — salt-dryers, fishermen 
and laborers — with their simple household 
effects, their rude tools and utensils. Since we 
passed up, they had hastily gathered into these 
little boats their moveables of every sort, re- 
solved, if we would convoy them, to return with 
us to Kangoon and live under the safer sky of 
the Company's rule. 

We cordially assured them of our protec- 
tion ; and with boisterous joy, to say nothing 



] 74 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

of the funny confusion, the infinity of blun- 
ders, they cast off their fasts and followed us, 
every boat " on its own hook." It was amus- 
ing to watch the eagerness of all to seize the 
places nearest the vessel ; for this they dis- 
puted and wrestled, and often fought, and some- 
times paid. They so crowded the ship that it 
was only with indefatigable watchfulness and 
pains-taking, lest many of them should be 
killed, that she could be steered. And in spite 
of all our care, more than a score of boats were 
crushed against the sides, or caught in the 
wheels and swamped — the people in them be- 
ing rescued not without some severe hurts. 

Three thousand child-like barbarians, less 
than three hundred of whom had ever seen a 
steamer before in their lives, ever heard a steam 
whistle, or seen the water churned up by 
wheels — three thousand astonished savages, ex- 
cited, terrified, awe-struck, bewildered, pulling 
seven hundred frail and clumsy boats, inextric- 
ably intertangled, on a narrow stream, in a 
tortuous channel and a racing current, be- 
tween ambuscaded shores, every minute in 
collision and often under the wheels, were 



The Dacoits' Ambush. 175 

enough to make distracting din — and so they 
did: women bobbing wildly from under the 
sampans and back again, screaming and scold- 
ing ; naked, brown babies screeching themselves 
into fits and tumbling overboard ; men tugging, 
pushing, climbing from boat to boat, and 
hoarsely shouting all the while ; interpreters 
in the stern of the steamer advising and bully- 
ing in four languages at once ; quarter-masters 
and boatswains damning in one language 
enough for four. 

The fact was, our proteges were in mortal 
terror of an attack from the shore. And pres- 
ently it came. 

Ten or twelve miles below Yangeenchinyah, 
we came upon a cluster of bamboo houses in a 
clump of low crooked trees. Here, we had 
been forewarned, a strong party of dacoits, who 
for years had made the place their rendezvous, 
would fire into our convoy. As we approached 
the spot, the excitement of the boats-people at 
first rose to the highest pitch of defensive pre- 
paration, and then subsided into a watchful 
stillness, quite awful after the bedlam din that 
had never lulled till then. The women crept, 



176 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

whispering, under the sampans, and even the 
babies became as still as though a thousand 
nipples stopped their mouths at once. 

Presently some twenty or thirty fellows 
with muskets and dhars, naked but for their 
breech-cloths and scanty red turbans, emerged 
from a thicket a few rods below the houses, 
and ran along the bank toward the steamer. 
They seemed to have no care to conceal them- 
selves, but, on the contrary, studiously exposed 
their persons, waving white cloths and cordially 
hailing us as they ran, crying " dacoitee !" 
" dacoitee! 5 *' So boldly was the manoeuvre 
executed that there was not one of us, even of 
the natives, who did not believe these men to 
be of our own party— a few of the boats- 
people, perhaps, who had landed to ferret out 
the dacoits and set our " dogs" on them. 
When they reached the houses, they passed 
around and behind them, and disappeared in 
the thicket beyond the clump of trees. 

At this time the steamer was quite dis- 
engaged from the flotilla ; the captain, in order 
to disembarrass her movements in the event 
of her guns coming into play, had ordered the 



Dispersing the Dacoits. 177 

boats to drop astern when we first sighted the 
village. Thus, although we were presently 
relieved of the crush and confusion, our ap- 
parent protection to the great body of the 
boats, which was just now passing the sharp 
bend by which we approached the town, was 
materially diminished. 

The Phlegethon had dropped anchor, and the 
guns were being run out for the enemy, when 
the boats arrived opposite the houses. At once, 
nearly two hundred dacoits, headed by the 
very men who had hailed us, rushed from 
between the thicket and the houses, and, run- 
ning to the edge of the bank, fired a volley into 
the thickest of the boats — and again, and again, 
before the steamer, now lying quite across the 
stream, could answer. Many were wounded 
and not a few killed, and the uproar and con- 
sternation were at their height. 

But in those three volleys the dacoits had 
done their worst. Our first discharge of grape 
cut many of them down, and sent the rest fly- 
ing in every direction. An old Peguan chief, 
with twenty men from the boats, armed with 

ship's muskets, chased them through the bam- 

8* 



178 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

boos and caught their Fra Diavolo. They 
brought the fellow down to the bank, .and, 
having tied him to a tree, shot him dead ; then, 
decapitating him, they mounted his head on a 
pole and hoisted it in the branches of the tree for 
a scare-dacoit. They would have burned him 
alive, and earnestly besought Captain Neblitt's 
consent to that picturesque addition to the 
programme. But we had neither the time nor 
the ferocity; so to their disappointment and 
disgust they had to content themselves with a 
more civilized and Christian style of thing. Be- 
fore returning to the ship they were ordered to 
burn the houses, a duty which they brilliantly 
performed, amid the outlandish glorification of 
their friends, male and female, big and little, 
and some astonishing gymnastics of a warlike 
character on their own part. 

Among our wounded were seven women, 
more or less severely hurt, from whose bodies 
musket balls — or, rather, irregular plugs of 
lead, hastily hammered between two stones — ; 
were extracted by the ship's surgeon, with a 
fortunate result in all the cases. 

One was an old woman of more than sixty 



The Wounded Women. 



179 



years, shot in the neck. The ball had struck the 
lower jaw, carrying away a splinter of bone, 
and glanced obliquely downward under the 
integument, lodging near the clavicle of the 
opposite side. This shapeless lump of lead 
had all the appearance of being the half of a 
crooked plug, partly bitten, partly torn with 
nippers ; for it had a sharp point and a ragged 
edge. 

In another case the ball had been quite flat- 
tened against the sacrum, and rebounding, had 
dropped out among the woman's clothes, 
where we found it. Another had entered the 
back near the spine and traversed at right 
angles, to, be imbedded among the muscles 
over the lower ribs. 

In fact, in almost all the cases, both of men 
and women, the balls were found to have been 
deflected, in some cases with extraordinary 
circuit. This was to be attributed to the irreg- 
ular surfaces of the balls and the inferior 
quality of the dacoits' powder. With only two 
exceptions the women had been struck in the 
lgwer P,§r^ o.f the back, owing to, the fact that 
ihey were in the act of creeping under the 



l8o Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

covers of the boats when the villains fired 
upon them. 

I shall always retain a tender recollection of 
one poor creature— quite a child, though a 
mother— who was under my care for several 
weeks after this affair. Her wound was of a 
desperate character, its complications most 
dangerous, the ball having penetrated her ab- 
domen, and lodged in the muscular tissue below 
the navel, on the right side. She bore the ex- 
traction, which was tedious and agonizing, with 
touching fortitude, convulsively pressing the 
hand of her old mother, and between the cruel 
twinges addressing the fondest expressions of 
endearment to her little yellow baby, which, 
quite naked, lay wonder-eyed and quiet on 
the old woman's shoulder ; and when at last 
I gave her the ball in her own hand, to play 
with and keep, there was no mistaking the 
hopefulness and capabilities of life in her min- 
gled sobs and laughter. 

She occupied my state-room after that until 
we removed her to the deck, which it was not 
safe to do for many days ; and so long as little 
Theen-gyee lay in my narrow bunk laughing 



Theen-gyee. 181 

feebly at the baby, and, in obedience to my in- 
junction to be quiet, folding her arms against 
it and forbidding her heart— so long as the 
patient old mother sat on the floor, lowly- 
minded and full of faith, holding little Theen- 
gyee's hand all day and night, waking or sleep- 
ing still holding the hand, keeping baby quiet 
with a string of bright "goolden" navy-but- 
tons, and whispering, now to the mother-child, 
now to the child-child, those dear old familiar 
phrases which, however strange the tongue, 
the eyes so readily render into household words 

so long as baby kicked and crowed and had 

his little homely functions, and protested with 
all his lungs against the substitution of the 
rice-spoon for the nipple— there were some less 
missionary places under the sky of Boodhism 
than my cuddy in the Phlegelhon, and many a 
more hopeless heathen than Theen-gyee or I. 

Poor child ! how eloquent— L mean how 
flattering— her gratitude was ! For nearly a 
fortnight she would take a cup of water or a 
plantain from no hand but mine, and when I 
brought it, would clasp my fingers and pat and 
smell them— the Burmese never kiss ; and when 



182 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

she lay on deck, as often as I would rise to 
leave her after sitting by her side awhile to 
play with or feed her, she would hold me fast 
by the ankle with both hands, sobbing, laugh- 
ing, talking, all together— never understanding 
that I could not understand. I began to think 
" great beer" of myself, and a very small vari- 
ety of that beverage of her husband, whom, in 
spite of the baby-doubt in his favor, she une- 
quivocally snubbed. 

When Theen-gyee was to be removed to the 
missionary hospital on shore, no one but I 
must lift her into the boat— no one but I 
must carry her into the doolee — none but I 
must lift her from the doolee into the house 
where Mr. Vinton and his excellent lady helped 
to make her whole again. And when at last 
little Theen-gyee was up and all about, the 
heartful of grateful love she brought me, went 
further than the blind man's basketful of rotten 
eggs, to show how much less worthy I was 
than she thought me, how much better than^ 
thought myself. 



The Rajah of Ingeboo. 183 



CHAPTER XXII. 

YOUNG INGEBOO — HIS SHADOWS — HIS TATTOO. 

Near Pontalong we intercepted four large 
boats, of which one, much carved and gilded, 
contained the young Rajah of Ingeboo with his 
women and servants, and the others, pulled by 
some of his people, were filled with household 
effects and provisions. This young fellow had 
crossed from Martaban, and was on his way 
up to join his father, who, with the Woons of 
Martaban and Dallah, had led the magnificent 
array which our shells so suddenly brought to 
nought. Under the rice, in one of the boats, 
we found eleven thousand rupees in little cakes 
of raw silver, beside about fifty muskets, lances, 
and dhars. The young Rajah lost also his gold 
umbrella and a fine dhar in a silver scabbard. 

As a type of the Burmese aristocrat, this 
young gentleman was well met : Tall— more 
than six feet, I should think, a rare stature 
among the Burmese — erect and well-pro- 



184 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

portioned, though robust even to fatness ; his 
skin, several shades lighter than in the common 
herd, smooth and polished ; his chin and cheeks 
effeminate, his lips amorous, his eyes lazy, his 
hair-knot worn petit-maitrely on one side, his feet 
sandaled, his tattooing elaborate, his breech- 
cloth voluminous, his turban jaunty, his whole 
attire foppish ; proud, apathetic, supercilious, 
or fawning, as the occasion demanded; formal, 
politely treacherous — and, I doubt not, cruel 
in his own jurisdiction, for the attendant who 
bore his betel-box and spittoon had alert and 
timid eyes. 

When Mrs. Judson described the Burmese as 
" a lively, industrious, and energetic race, fur- 
ther advanced in civilization than most of the 
Eastern nations — frank, candid, destitute of that 
pusillanimity which distinguishes the Hindoos, 
and of that revenegful malignity which is a lead- 
ing trait in the Malay character," she had in 
her mind's eye the unsophisticated, confiding 
fishermen or peasants, or, perhaps, the gentle, 
patient, honest Karens, not courtiers of the 
stamp of this coxcomb of Ingeboo. The differ- 
ence between the peasant and the noble, the 



Young Ingeboo's Harem. 185 

ruled and the ruler, in Burmah, is just the dif- 
ference between primitive ingenuousness and 
studious guile. The first often deserve the 
best which the partial Symes has said for them ; 
on the latter even our bitter Abdoolah was not 
too severe. 

The foppery of the young Rajah afforded us 
infinite amusement. As long as his floating 
menage was towing astern he honored us with 
two visits daily, before and after noon, hauling 
alongside in a very humble dug-out ; and on 
these occasions he ostentatiously presented 
himself in fresh vanities for each new visit, as 
if to astonish us with the splendor and abund- 
ance of his wardrobe. I do not remember 
being called upon to admire him twice in the 
same combination of superlative fashion. With 
each new suit he put on new airs, and, in spite 
of our laughter, patronized or snubbed us with 
magnificent ease. 

Though but nineteen years of age, as was 
said, he had engaged largely in the business of 
love, and invested no little of his leisure and 
condescension in certain dainty material where- 
with to do his best for the scanty population 



186 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

of the Burman empire. Plainly, our charming 
prisoner was a Burmese sensualist of the warm- 
est sort, and if his wives and concubines were 
less numerous than Solomon's, it is certain 
that they had, therefore, no sinecures among 
them. 

Sometimes, in the evening, as we sat in the 
stern, smoking cheroots on the bull-ring and 
looking down among the shadows of young 
Ingeboo's boat, toward where the petroleum 
taper glimmered behind the Turkey-red curtain 
that veiled his inner temple, we could spy 
shadows that were like young bosoms, and 
catch sounds that were like the laughter of 
romping girls ; and as generous conquerors 
should, we rejoiced that our prisoners were not 
pining. 

Once a shadow stepped out into the foreground 
and stood on the edge of a stream of moonlight ; 
next morning I gave the lord of that shadow 
two bottles of Heidsick champagne, and beg- 
ged that he would keep it for the entertainment 
of the vision. For once, the conceited young 
prig, astonished exceedingly by the gold labels 
and the silver tops, looked truly humble and sa- 



Ingeboo's Tattoo. 187 

laamed accordingly. Abdoollah u hoped that 
he appreciated the honor done him," assuring 
him that I was a lord of a great many gold 
umbrellas and the chain of nine strings, and 
that in my kingdom rajahs of my degree drank 
only silver wine — except when princes called 
on us, when we opened the gold. 

Young Ingeboo was seemingly overpowered. 
With really tiresome salaams he backed into his 
canoe and retired to his mysteries, jealously 
grasping the silver tops, and still astonished. 
All that day we saw no more of him. On the 
morrow he came aboard looking headachy 
and disappointed, and reported in confidence 
to Abdoolah, that " that fussy stuff" was a hum- 
bug, and but small beer compared with brandy. 
The puppy ! I have a suspicion that the 
Shadow knoweth not the bubble of Heidsick 
to this day — that he never even gave her the 
silver tops, or my love. 

The tattooing of young Ingeboo was laid on 
by a master-hand. It was high art even in 
Burmah, where artists in lampblack and fish- 
galls are held in the first esteem, and exten- 
sively fostered by the State. The elaborate 



i88 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

grotesques and arabesques of a Burmese gen- 
tleman are, to the rude, unmeaning rings, 
stripes and patches of a Polynesian man-eater, 
what the " Portrait of a Lady," on the breast of 
the boatswain of the Susquehannah, is to the 
" Bill Stubs — his mark," worn by the cook 
of canal-boat No. 9, under the hair on the 
back of his hand — which, by-the-by, resembles 
an old-fashioned trunk with the "mange." 

An inch or two above his navel, young Inge- 
boo was encircled with fabulous birds, impossi- 
ble birds, such as the artist could have seen only 
in the aviary of the Prince of the air spirits. 
These were done in vermillion — thirteen birds, 
and every bird standing on a monkey's head. 
Thus, thirteen blue monkeys girded him round 
about, just where his pu'sho was tucked under 
at the waistband. A small crimson serpent 
with a blue head was coiled about his navel, 
half within and half without — a cunninff de- 
vice, so expertly done that the little creature 
seemed just emerging from the hollow. The 
thirteen blue monkeys grinned on the backs 
of thirteen blue hogs of Bassien, with blush- 
ing tails ; and after that all were blue, and 



Ingeboo's Tattoo. 189 

Ol ending one into the other. The tiger, that 
was a hog at first, digressed into a lion before 
it arrived, by way of a rhinoceros, at the shape 
of an elephant on its route to a crocodile; and 
having got by such a zoological concatenation 
— with a better idea, than when you started, of 
the doctrine of transmigrations — to the condi- 
tion of a Nat in young Ingeboo's loins, you 
were prepared for the fiery demons that occupi- 
ed the pillars of his thighs. 

Yet were these diverse shapes so softly 
blended— with no interstices of naked skin, or 
abrupt transitions from bird to beast, from 
reptile to devil— that you drifted gently down 
the tide of pictured grotesqueness without a vul- 
gar surprise on either hand. A little way off, 
our Ingeboo Brummel might have passed for 
an eccentric young gentleman in very tight 
blue breeches with a red waist-band. Indeed, 
I saw, last winter, in the window of a tailor's 
shop on Broadway, a pair of French " pants," 
the pattern of which was evidently designed by 
somebody who knew somebody who had seen 
our young Rajah without his pu'sho. 



190 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE PAGODA ROAD— POONGHEE AND MISSIONARY THE BA- 
ZAAR DISEMBOWELING THE GODS BURMESE VENERATION. 

Kangoon, on oar return thither, is filled 
with bustling builders and lively bazaars. The 
panorama of the Pagoda Koad, from the river 
up, presents some strange encounters and con- 
trasts. 

The yellow-draped and meditative poon- 
ghee, barefooted and with shaven crown, at- 
tended by a boy, himself in little, quietly 
raises his imperturbable eyes to salute the 
searching, interrogative, solicitous Yankee mis- 
sionary, in white beaver hat and white neck-tie, 
the same as at home — his head erect, his eyes 
everywhere; his thoughts divided between the 
scene around him, his latest instructions from 
the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions, the prospects of his Karen 
school, the site of his new hospital, the number 
of native Testaments he must procure from the 



The Pagoda Road. 191 

Mission Press to-morrow, the sore on his pony's 
back, and the side-saddle which must be al- 
tered for his little girl. 

Poonghee meditates along, unruffled, quite 
content — wondering, perhaps, why this dis- 
tracted Kula, this stranger, should come so far 
to fret for him, whose soul is comfortable, 
whose conscience is satisfied and still — won- 
dering if there is no Nieban, no perfect and 
eternal calm, for the strange priest and his God. 

Missionary hurries on, asking his crowded 
heart how, in the time which is left to it, it can 
save all these souls alive and heal the pony's 
back. Perhaps a dozen Karen youths, of both 
sexes, follow at his heels, like attached and 
honest dogs — carrying, even as good dogs 
would carry them, hymn-books and catechisms: 
timid, non-resisting though sorely oppressed ; 
shy and shrinking, holding themselves aloof 
from cities and strangers ; pastoral, industrious, 
hospitable in their own communities ; grateful 
for the least kindness, whether to their bodies 
or their souls; hoping much from the white 
man's God, and believing in the coming of a 
fair Immortal from the west. 



192 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

The lower part of the Pagoda road lay among 
the ruins of the middle stockade, and near 
by were some handsome poonghee-houses and 
small temples, old and very curious; as well 
as many grotesque monsters in stone — Nats, 
griffins, and crocodiles. This quarter was now 
lined with shops and stalls, and stirring with 
a new-born trade in earthen jars and lacquered 
boxes, trays, and cups ; Turkey-red for turbans ; 
thabi and engi cloth for jackets and skirts ; 
sandals, palmyra fans, ear-rings, and feathers; 
tobacco, betel-leaf, areca-nuts, gnapee or putrid 
fish for sauce, ghee or clarified butter, a little 
venison, dried lizards, beetles, pulse, garlic, and 
greens. 

Here garrulous old women, giggling girls, 
and sharp-looking boys pressed their outland- 
ish wares upon ensigns, drill sergeants, mid- 
shipmen, boatswains' mates, and pursers' stew- 
ards, receiving with their annas and pice a 
great variety of personal compliments more 
free than refined. Here was the gathering 
wherein to study the Burmese in their political 
and social peculiarities ; to observe their do- 
mestic industries, their native productions, and 



Disemboweling the Gods. 193 

their personal charms. This certainly was not 
the place for you to be eloquent and con- 
vincing in, against annexation in its Dalhousiean 
aspect. 

Along the Pagoda road, on both sides of it, 
from the King's wharf to the Golden Dagon, 
were many idols, respectable by their age and 
stature ; pot-bellied old fellows, each in a road- 
side shrine to himself. These our fellows, both 
of the land and sea, had robbed, mutilated, 
and variously vandalized, in a most Christian- 
ish manner — characteristic of a people who 
devour warm flesh, among whom butchers are 
an institution, and whose priests go abroad in 
ships and take their women into the pagodas. 

Soldiers, sailors, and marines, with hatchet 
and chisel, had performed upon the corpulent 
persons of these sacred fogies a sort of rude 
Caesarean operation, by which they were de- 
livered of sundry manikin gods in silver, solid 
or plated : to say nothing of little silver scrolls 
inscribed with Pali characters of mysterious 
import, as well as small utensils of strange 
shapes and unknown uses, and many images of 

fabulous animals. 
9 



194 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

It was from sifcm sources as this that our 
fellows derived all their loot, as they called 
plunder; nor had the unscrupulous appropria- 
tion at any time a revolting aspect to even the 
most Quixotic minds among us. No popular 
affection was wronged, no religious pride in- 
sulted, no superstition alarmed. The Burmese 
are satisfied to let their gods and devils, from 
Guadma to the Sacred Goose, take care of 
their own images, never doubting that they 
can do that if they are fit to be gods at all ; 
and though they do not go the length of lick- 
ing them into good behavior, as some African 
tribes do, they would hardly fight for their 
silver outsides except the treasure were great, 
certainly never for their wood, or stone, or 
lead. 

The manufacture of these gods is a popular 
branch of industry, and their sale a mere busi- 
ness transaction. Symes visited an image-yard 
where Guadmas of all sizes, and in every style 
of material and finish, were planted in rows 
like fancy gravestones, or stacked in piles like 
fashionable coffins. 

When a cunning Burman would court good 



Burmese Veneration. i g? 

luck for his affairs by "a deed of exalted merit" 
—as his poonghee calls every pious investment, 
from the consecration of a six-penny image to 
the founding of a supreme pagoda-he buys an 
idol in lead or alabaster, hires a reverend gen- 
tleman to sanctify and consecrate it, deposits it 
in a temple with ceremonies more or less 
expensive, and never again fashes himself about 
it. If the god was worth his money, it can 
keep itself whole and in good repair; other- 
wise it deserves to be smashed. 



ic)6 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE SPOETS OF THE GROVE FOOT-BALL PUPPETS THE 

DRAMA — A BURMESE RACHEL. 

Passing through the bazaar by a paved 
passage leading back from the main road, you 
emerged into a secluded grove, very charming 
with vines and low shrubbery and the swing- 
ing shadows of Palmyra palms. Here one of 
the most considerable poonghee-houses of Kan- 
goon had already been degraded, by an Arme- 
nian trader, into a sort of omnibus shop for the 
troops and shipping. Here Burmese idlers 
were gathered from morning till night in the 
hope of catching British gold, by holding 
ponies, or carrying bundles, or running by 
your side with umbrellas when you came into 
the sun ; exhibiting dancing dolls, or nautch 
girls — scarcely more life-like than their wooden 
imitators ; making distracting concerts with 
gongs, and drums, and stringed instruments 
and horns ; or, when the long shadows of 



Foot-Ball. igy 

evening fell, suffering the flying foot-ball to 
alight at last, which had danced in mid air 
since morning; or later, by the red light of 
petroleum bon-fires and innumerable flame- 
dropping torches, enacting, in mythological 
plays, the doughty deeds of Burman demigods : 
the abductions, imprisonments and tortures, 
the endless persecutions and perplexities, of the 
Silver Princess of the Golden Mountain: the 
wondrous transformations, far flights and mighty 
labors of the Nats : the wicked spite of witches : 
the enchantments of potent magicians: the 
small sharp tricks of microscopic fairies : the 
mischief and the terror of fire-spitting imps : 
and all. the plot and personnel of the goblin 
drama, the same in Burmah as in the latitude 
of Harlequin and Columbine— with a differ- 
ence, in the amount of sublimity and legiti- 
mate horror, decidedly in favor of the Silver 
Princess of the Golden Mountain. 

Foot-ball, as it is played in Burmab, is among 
the most lively and graceful of all sports of 
agility. A light wicker ball, as large as a 
man's head, and sometimes containing jingling 
bits of metal, serves for any number of young 



198 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

men and boys, the more the merrier. Some- 
times the open road is chosen for the game ; 
sometimes the green sward of a clear space 
around a poonghee-house ; or else — but this 
must be during some gay religious holiday — 
the pagoda terrace, or the smoothly paved court 
at the foot of the broad stairs. 

The party being all ready — sandals, if any, 
thrown off, and engis, or whatever else might 
bind the elastic limbs and impede the free, lithe 
movements of the players — the ball is tossed 
aloft by whoever happens to have it at the mo- 
ment, and the game begins, to end only when 
the toy has touched the earth, or been struck 
with the hand, or caught in the arms. As it falls, 
it is met by the nearest with his ankle or his 
elbow, or, best of all, the sole of his foot, and 
with a quick, sharp impulse, sent flying up 
again. And so they lead it an aerial dance all 
day — sometimes shooting higher than any house- 
top, higher than the carved gallery atop of the 
great monastery, higher than the upper terrace 
of Shway-Dagoung, and half way up the spire, 
over the tops of the kioums, up the tall bam- 
boo flag-staff as high as the Sacred Goose, 



Puppets. 199 

flying in the very face of the colossal Guadma, 
rebounding even from his breast — but always, 
on its return, finding the nimble foot, the 
quick elbow, ready to receive it and send it 
back on its airy flight again. 

In the course of the day scores, sometimes 
hundreds, of idlers, coming up, fall in to keep 
the game alive and fill the places of those who 
are continually dropping off; so that the few 
who saw the tossing of the ball in the morning 
are rarely " in" at its final descent at dusk. 

The puppets are most ingenious and amusing 
toys. They are dolls of wood and cloth, from 
twelve to eighteen inches high, numerously 
jointed, and the joints played upon by means 
of strings which pass through holes in a stick 
held in the performer's hands. They represent 
both sexes; and in figure, costume, complexion, 
and expression, are ridiculously faithful. 

There is a complete pantomime enacted by 
each, with orchestral accompaniments, in which 
the plot almost invariably turns on the amours 
of some very fat old nobleman with a mima of 
great terpsichorean qualifications and the freest 
morals. For this occasion the prodigal maid 



2oo Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

affects at first a chary mood, to afford her fat 
inamorato an opportunity to bring out the full 
force of his seductions ; and the coyness on the 
one side and soft siege on the other, closing in 
surrender and high triumph, are conveyed in 
attitudes, gestures, expression, everything but 
words, somewhat too exact for the most fas- 
tidious ; nor is any touch of nature lost in the 
climax. 

In the Burmese, theatre — which, as I have 
said, is extemporized, with a bonfire and abund- 
ance of petroleum torches, in any sufficiently 
wide street of a village where the houses are 
not so crowded as to be in danger from the 
sparks, or in some sacred grove or court of a 
temple — the plot of the play is usually drawn 
from the Ramayan of Balmiec, a collection of 
fables and mythological parables of the widest 
popularity among the Hindoos. Only the out- 
line of the story is preserved, the language 
being improvised by the actors with astonishing 
cleverness and harmony of effect. 

The female characters are usually personated 
by men — the profession of an actress being con- 
sidered a hundred times more disreputable than 



A Burmese Rachel. 201 

among our most strait-laced communities. 
Nevertheless, at a dramatic performance which 
I witnessed at Moulmein, a handsome and 
very graceful young woman appeared, whose 
performance drew rounds of applause from the 
most sophisticated of our party — gentlemen 
who had graduated in dramatic criticism at the 
Queen's Theatre, and the Comedie Frangaise. 
Her pantomime would have held its own with 
the sublime declamation of Rachel ; and she 
depicted the passions of fear, anger, grief, 
astonishment, gratitude, joy, with a power that 
made the barbaric scene and its superstitious 
surroundings almost awful. 

With her armlets and anklets of silver and 
copper, her rich engi of crimson silk, her volu- 
minous scarf of pink gauze, discovering, with 
her every graceful pose in the ruddy light of 
bonfire and torches, glimpses of a bosom free, 
but dim; with her slender arms naked and 
nut-brown, her fine fingers and flexile toes 
thickly ringed, her great ear-hoops of gold, 
and the silver snood in her hair, she was the 
Princess of the Silver Mountain — (there is 

always a Princess of the Silver Mountain). 

9* 



202 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

But this Princess had been almost as naughty 
as unfortunate : she had had a Huntsman-lover 
(there is always a Huntsman,) and a little baby 
unbeknown to her royal father, (the play cannot 
go on without a King,) who, instigated by the 
devil in the shape of a machinating minister, 
(there must also be a Minister, very pious or 
very crafty,) had banished her, baby and all, to 
the Cave of Fear in the Pit of Witches, where 
the witches plagued her, and set imps (Imps 
likewise are essential,) at her with snakes that 
bit the baby, so that it came near to die. And 
as she watched by the moaning boy, her own 
life waning with the light of his eyes, many 
devils came, making the usual faces and noises, 
to snatch the baby away and take it to feed 
the hungry Crocodile that bellows in the Black 
River. 

But, with the spell of the Three Whispers 
and the Seven Thoughts, and the charm of the 
water-beads, (a Charm is as invariable as Harle- 
quin's sword of lath,) she kept them at bay, till 
her Huntsman-lover came and routed them out- 
right, with the Gong of Thunder and the Dhar 
of Flame. Then immediately the baby was 



The Legitimate Drama. 203 

made whole, and the scene changed to the 
Garden of Gold by the River of Ivory, where 
the Huntsman was blessed by the Royal father 
and married to the Princess of the Silver 
Mountain, to reign over the Immortal Pea- 
cocks. 

Considering the meagerness of the plot, the 
poverty of the properties, the impromptu qual- 
ity of the scenery, the discordant elements of 
the orchestra, the inappropriateness of every- 
thing but the lights, this representation was 
not bad. Nothing could be sicker-looking than 
the child, or more devilish than the devils, or 
more weird than the witches, or fiercer than 
the Huntsman, or more tremendous than the 
King. 

The performance of the Princess was won- 
derful, and in a degree painful. As she sat 
rocking to and fro over the moaning child, and 
half maundering, half crooning, a song of la- 
mentation — or as, on the entrance of the imps, 
she started to her feet and began dancing round 
and round, or from side to side, at first very 
slowly, then faster and faster, then whirling 
madly between them and their prey, her 



20d Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

long hair standing straight out from her head 
centrifugal ly, her armlets and anklets clashing 
and jingling, her eyes fixed in a spasm of ter- 
ror — or, having driven them off once more, as 
she threw herself, exhausted, panting, trem- 
bling, convulsed, upon the ground beside her 
dying boy — in all she was cruelly tragic with 
true barbaric passions. 



Mindakeen. 205 



CHAPTER XXV. 

MINDAKEEN ONE LITTLE ROMANCE OF A SHOULDER-STRAP, 

AND ANOTHER OF PAIJAMAS. 

In spite of the Armenian's cheese and 
crockery, sardines and hardware, clay pipes 
and curry-powder, there was an angel in the 
old poonghee-house, who sometimes, at twi- 
light, filled the grove with the loveliness of 
her apparition. An angel in a plaid engi, and, 
instead of a thabi, a Cashmere scarf; with gold- 
embroidered sandals on her dimpled feet, and 
a rose — by Jove, a rose ! — in her hair : where- 
fore we called her the Lady Mindakeen — a 
Burmo- Armenian angel, with short locks like 
a boarding-school girl, and a blue silk umbrella 
instead of wings. 

As often as seclusion and stillness had the 
grove to themselves, and the falling shadows 
would serve her for a veil, Mindakeen came 
forth with her little Burmese handmaidens, to 
whisper tip-toedly under the banians and down 



2o6 Up and Down the Irrawaddh 

by the pool-mirror back of the kioum. And 
often, as I plyed between the pagoda and the 
ship, and, just at the witching hour, came to 
the pretty road-side shrine that marked where 
the foot-path turned off to the poonghee-house, 
and, throwing the rein of my heathen pony 
over the neck of the fourth Boodh, sat down 
to think, upon the very wood or stone that 
some man as good as myself had lately bowed 
down to (how hard it was to think, to feel, to 
dream in such a scene, and come away remem- 
bering it !) have I peered for Mindakeen in 
among the shadows, that were just thick enough 
to confound the nice hues and fine lines of 
half-a-dozen ankles, though adding lustre to 
the whiteness of the solitary rose-star. 

Not even her peddling husband, nor the 
curry, clay-pipes and hardware, could make 
Mindakeen common-place ; for she had a history. 

An old Armenian, long resident in Rangoon, 
a man of wealth and note amonsr the foreign 
merchants, and who exercised, it was said, a 
marked influence with every Woon of his time 
as to measures for the regulation of the foreign 
trade, took to wife a young and beautiful 



Mindakeen. 207 

Burmese girl of the lower orders, whom he had 
ransomed from slavery by the payment of her 
father's debts. In a year she died in giving 
birth to Mindakeen, who, fostered by slave- 
nurses, lived and waxed in surpassing beauty. 
The old man, despising in his heart the whole 
Burmese race, reared her strictly in the Arme- 
nian faith and ways, and directing toward the 
child of his old age and his weakness the most 
cunning vigilance, pursued her with spies 
when she went abroad to bazaar or tank, and 
challenged every comer who presumed to wear 
his top-knot on one side and fee musicians for 
her sake. 

Especially was the k ' stern parient" a hearty 
English-hater, politically and socially. He had 
caught more than one pair of eyes reconnoiter- 
ing his porches and compound from under a 
gold-band, and more than once he had ex- 
plained to his own satisfaction the unwonted 
fidgets of Mindakeen, as she sat in the door 
making fig-leaf cigars, by the proximity of 
some shining rows of Company's buttons. So 
the loose trowsers and impudence were tabooed 
to her forever. 



208 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

But in this, Armenia worked at a disadvan- 
tage. Bolts and bars for romantic runaways 
are not the fashion in Burmah ; nor are veils, 
even, imposed upon pretty faces by law. Min- 
dakeen's area of freedom was almost as wide as 
her curiosity, and her presence in bazaars, at 
weddings, and in holiday processions was not 
stranger than it was welcome. 

So once, as she led the choir of maidens at 
a poonghee's funeral, a gleam of brave romance 
from a gold shoulder-strap dazzled the eyes of 
her filial obedience, and at the same instant a 
side-long glance of Woman's Rights from under 
the Mindakeen lids flashed sharper than a two- 
edged sword straight to the heart that was 
nearest the shoulder-strap. 

For weeks after that, the bones of this Ran- 
goon Juliet's nurse ached with jaunting up 
and down between her lady-bird and the honest 
gentleman, " and a courteous, and a kind, and 
a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous;" till 
one day Mindakeen was up and gone with her 
Shoulder-Strap over the river to Dallah. And 
immediately the old Armenian in a fit of rage 
burst his spleen and died, which was timely for 



Two Romances. 209 

the lovers, who might else have tasted the 
bamboo, to say nothing of the stocks. 

When they had been married (not to be too 
particular) only a year, Shoulder-Strap took 
ship to Calcutta, and that was the last of him 
for Mindakeen. Six years, according to law, 
she waited for him ; and then, with all an East- 
ern woman's faculty of reconciling herself to 
circumstances, she consented to the clay-pipes 
and curry-powder, and went home to live with 
her father's countryman and idyllize the poon- 
ghee-house, in spite of three babies. 

Once Mindakeen had the fever-and-ague and 
came near to die, but with some quinine I 
restored to the banians their celestial visitant ; 
whereupon she rewarded me with a pair of 
disappointed silk paijamas that else would 
have clung — happy paijamas! — to the sweetest 
knees in Burmah. I cherish them still ; and as 
long as a thread of the original gift can be dis- 
covered through these Yankee darns, they shall 
serve, as well as a lock of her hair, to keep my 
memory green and her ankles slender. 

It is law in Burmah that if a doctor lets a 
sick girl die he must pay the price of her body, 



2io Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

which is about twenty-five ticals— twenty dol- 
lars ; but if he heals her she becomes his own, 
and he may take her away to his house. By 
that wise ordinance Mindakeen was mine, and 
the paijamas are a legal document. 



An Experiment. 211 



CHAPTER XXYI. 

AN EXPERIMENT — BANDOOLA'S BLUFF — GIVING A LITTLE HERO 
THE SLIP. 

General Godwin had all along argued that 
there was not water enough, even in the high 
rains, to carry the small steamers to Prome ; or, 
granting the possibility of their getting there, 
how were they to get back ? The Commodore 
replied by sending us to try. Accordingly, 
when the Phlegethon joined the Proserpine, Me- 
dusa, and Mahanuddy at the rendezvous above 
Jaloom, Captain Tarleton of the Fox, com- 
manding the flotilla, immediately got us all 
under way for Prome. 

We steamed up the river against a powerful 
current, and at 1 J P. M. came upon a six-gun 
battery with fifteen hundred men, at Pah-now. 
We attacked them at once, and they fought 
well, firing irregularly until half-past four, by 
which time most of their guns and themselves 
had been knocked over. Our orders were posi- 



212 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

five, on no account to land anywhere short of 
Prome ; so we left them unceremoniously, a small 
party, plucky to the last, firing two or three 
shots after us as we left. Such an opportunity 
always afforded them peculiar satisfaction, and 
I doubt not they dispatched a courier to Ava 
to report that they had driven us off disabled. 

On our passage up, villagers hailing us from 
the banks said a son of the Maha Bandoola had 
intrenched himself in a strong position at Akok- 
toung, with twenty-five hundred men and twen- 
ty guns; and, sure enough, we found him there 
— only his men were seven thousand and his 
guns were forty — occupying a position of pictur- 
esque strength on the top of a high bluff at a 
bend in the river, just where it separates Pegu 
from Burmah proper ; in fact, this conspicuous 
landmark is the key to the kingdom of Ava. It 
is twelve hundred feet high, and inaccessible 
save by a difficult foot-path at the back. 

To imposing ramparts erected by nature Ban- 
doola had made extensive artificial additions. 
He had his heaviest guns at the base of the 
bluff on the river's level, to hull us ; his lighter 
guns and musketry were stationed all over the 



Bandoola's BlufF. 213 

face of the eminence up to the very top. By 
this disposition, had we been compelled to pass 
within range, he could have sunk every steamer ; 
with his musketry alone he could have swept 
our decks. The current runs powerfully around 
the point, and we should have been an hour or 
more under the full weight of his fire, without 
the possibility of returning a shot. 

But we gave him the go-by. Right over 
against Akoktoung, as Bandoola's bluff was 
called, was the village of Youngtzay, lying in 
the hollow of the river's elbow; and at the 
upper end of Youngtzay a narrow arm, quite 
out of Bandoola's range, was separated from the 
main stream by two small islands, to join it 
again two miles above. Two months before, 
this creek was entirely dry, and of course it 
had never entered the sagacious pate of the 
Little Hero, "the son of his father," that ves- 
sels of our apparent draught would adventure 
the passage. By this we dodged him. 

As we approached the village, thousands of 
the gentle, child-like people, forever treat- 
ing us to surprises of foolish trust and fear- 
lessness, were seated on the shore — old men 



214 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

and women, maidens, young mothers, and 
children. They salaamed to the passing steam- 
ers, the mothers bouncing their little ones and 
laughing, the girls waving white cloths and 
tossing flowers in the air, and the young men 
and little naked boys running along the bank 
to point out to us the safe way to Prome, by the 
creek. And this under the very eyes and guns 
of a fierce, unsparing savage, at whose mercy 
they would be even before we were out of 
sight. 

But so it was everywhere. In the lower 
provinces, which we had just left, the inhabit- 
ants were flocking by thousands to take refuge 
under the British flag, imploring and finding 
protection and aid. Wherever the people had 
been allowed the use of their eyes and ears, 
they had been quick to perceive the advantage 
of an alliance with the enemies of their cruel, 
crushing government, and had hailed our ad- 
vent with a thousand welcomes. 

It was now late, and the current was torrent- 
like. We pushed on under full power till the 
moonlight left us, and then anchored in the 
dark. 



Prome. 21 J 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

PROME — THE LADIES AN INDIGNANT BLOOMER — SURPRISING 

A GREAT GENERAL — ASTONISHING HIM. 

At day-break we were abreast the ghauts 
of Prome. We found the inhabitants unadvised 
of our approach, and unprepared to oppose us. 
With the insane confidence peculiar to the 
Burmese, they had been making themselves 
comfortable in the conviction that either Ban- 
doola would blow us out of the water, which 
would be good for them, or we should blow 
him off his rock, which would be better. They 
had guns enough, but no powder ; Bandoola 
had taken it all with him, assuring them that 
there would thenceforth be no use for guns or 
ammunition above Akoktoung. So, like all 
the rest, they came down to the bank and 
squatted there, seeming even glad to see us. 
At first they supposed we had finished " the 
son of his father." 

We took twenty-three guns, three state 



2 1 6 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

boats, and seven superb bells. There were 
many tons of shot which we had not time to 
remove. The Promans themselves were active 
in aiding us to ship the guns. 

The landscape at Prome is Rhine-like in its 
picturesqueness. The lands, which have been 
low T -lying and jungly ever since Rangoon, now 
suddenly swell into green hills, or are broken 
and upheaved in irregular piles of grim granite ; 
and the outline of timber-crowned mountains 
is sharply defined against the Northern sky. 
The river, too, widens as suddenly, and becomes 
a lake-like expanse, flashing and canoe-dotted. 

Then Prome has its golden pagoda, and its 
ruined fort, and its pillared banian, and a 
curious alley of palms. There are some very 
Westernish slopes opposite, that look as though 
they might be hiding a Christian barn behind 
them, in spite of three snowy pagodas not a long 
gun-shot off. 

That day, bevies of merry girls, a score at a 
time, came off to see us, matronized by certain 
half-bearded " females," very ugly, very garru- 
lous, and by no means nice. The pretty crea- 
tures were too curious to be over shy, if they 



An Indignant Bloomer. 217 

were not also too innocent; and the unsophis- 
ticated way in which they made free with the 
freedom of the ship which, of course, we gal- 
lantly offered them, was certainly funny 
enough, and, perhaps, would have been em- 
barrassing had they not been only heathens. 

They rummaged our bunks, and without a 
blush made merry over the mysteries of gun- 
room penetralia. But, alas! not one of them 
had ever fainted in her life — they were as igno- 
rant of sal-volatile as of the Sacrament. 

One strong-minded puss — who, from her un- 
terrified study of our costume, must have been 
a tailoress, or a transmigrated Bloomer — man- 
aged, with the aid of a midshipman, to get 
into a pair of my drawers — red flannel ones, left 
from Cape Horn. The thing was easy to do, 
Middy being a handy lad, and the only impedi- 
ment one short skirt of Turkey-red, open at 
the side from the hip, and betraying every 
moment " some modest lines of nut-brown 
limb." Our Proman Bloomer was highly 
elated, showing her Woman's Rights even 
more than is necessary in crossing Broadway 

after a shower, and when asked how she liked 
10 



2i8 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

red flannel, answered in a Burmese syllable or 
two, which, being politely rendered into 
English, meant " tickle." 

Indeed she was in high glee, until I asked the 
most knowing of the old " females" — one who 
claimed to be mother, first to this maid, then 
to that, and who displayed first-rate business 
qualities — " How many rupees for the merry 
mima?" 

No sooner were the playful words repeated 
to the pretty creature, than instantly, her April 
face overclouding, she flung all my little gifts 
on the deck with a beautiful angry gesture, 
and, with exclamations of mingled astonish- 
ment, indignation, and terror, flew to the deck 
and over the gangway, ere we had guessed the 
reason why, and flung herself into her boat. 

Pushing off into the stream, she slowly pad- 
dled " off and on" between the steamer and the 
shore, sobbing and scolding with the most 
charming child-likeness. No explanations, no 
coaxing, no for-shames could move her ; and 
when I went to the side of the ship and tried 
to look my sweetest, and a little injured, she 
became highly dramatic. Dropping her paddle 



Proman Girls. 219 

in the bottom of the canoe, she dipped her 
pretty ringers into the water on both sides of 
the slender craft, and holding them on high, 
ad dripping, she literally ''washed her hands 
of me." 

As for the others, they tittered, and giggled, 
and simpered, and smirked, and pouted, and 
bridled in the good old way, the same in Yan- 
geenchinyah as in Yankee land. When we 
pointed to the guns, and made faces, and said 
"boom!" they screamed little screams, and 
fluttered off a yard or two, and then returned, 
did-you-evering and no-I-nevering as plainly as 
mouths, and eye-brows, and hands could do it. 
And when we pointed to the white rolls of 
11 stowed" hammocks in the nettings, and said 
"boom !" to them also, they played over again 
their little foolish trepidations as naturally as 
before, and as prettily. 

With pieces of Turkey-red, and handfuls of 
bugle-beads, and some artificial flowers, long 
before provided for such occasions, I secured 
the intercession of a dozen of them, by dint 
of which, my outraged Bloomer was induced 
to accept from me, for a peace-offering, a Ger- 



220 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

man-silver match-box, with little wax marches, 
the crackling of which would, in her amiable 
moments, have delighted her exceedingly. She 
caught it in her nimble fingers, I tossing it 
from the gangway, and that was the last I 
ever saw of her. 

We lay off the town all night, and in the 
morning, after reconnoitering for a few miles 
up the river, we started homeward, with every 
prospect of having to run the gauntlet past 
Bandoola. We had seen, as we came up, that 
the right-hand side of the creek presented, at 
its narrowest part, a formidable cover behind 
rocks for a few heavy guns and any amount 
of musketry, and that if Bandoola were capable 
of average celerity of movement he could post 
at least a thousand men there to cut us off as 
we returned. Certainly, under such circum- 
stances, there would be scarcely a chance of 
escape for any vessel that might get aground. 
Our guns could avail us nothing in a position 
so " crowded," and the water was falling rap- 
idly between the rains. 

Accordingly, a barricade of heavy pieces of 
timber was erected on the bridge to protect 



Surprising Bandoola. 221 

the Captain, and a similar defense was fur- 
nished to the man at the wheel. A few picked 
men, with muskets, lay down close under the 
rail, and the rest were sent below. Thus we 
made ready for the creek and an ambush. 

The Medusa ran on with CaptaiR Tarleton, 
and, as she entered the passage, showed the 
signal to close and support her. Just then we 
discovered four large war-boats crossing over 
from Bandoola's bluff. Each boat contained 
from 100 to 150 men, and had a light gun in 
the bow. 

It appeared that, although Bandoola had ex- 
erted himself with creditable activity, we had 
been too fast for him. As soon as his boats 
were made out, all steam was crowded on, and, 
running down upon them, we "pitched in" 
with grape, canister, and round shot. They 
gave us their musketry, from the boats and the 
town, as well as they could, but with no effect. 
Our fire never slacked for two hours. 

At the end of that time we had killed a great 
many of Bandoola's people, burned more than 
half the town — of which he had taken posses- 
sion since we passed up, most of the poor crea- 



222 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

tures who had hailed us from the bank flying be- 
fore him into the jungle — captured seven more 
guns, destroyed a fleet of war-boats, and made 
prizes of three gilded state barges and Ban- 
doola's standard. Never was barbarian's mili- 
tary ambition more effectually nipped in the 
bud. 

Leaving her consorts then, the Phlegethon 
ran down to Rangoon. 



The Oath and Imprecations. 223 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE OATH AND IMPRECATIONS— MAIDENS, WIVES, CONCUBINES 
AND PROSTITUTES. 

At Rangoon I attended the Police Court to 
see Captain Latter, the Provisional Commis- 
sioner, administer the famous Burmese oath to 
some fellows on trial for dacoitee. This oath, 
as adapted to Boodhist consciences, is so inge- 
niously terrible that even a Burman dacoit 
shrinks from taking it in vain. It is inscribed 
on leaves of palm, bound like other Burmese 
books, and held over the head of the witness 
with certain foolish rites, such as the chewing 
of pickled tea, sticking out the tongue, etc. 
In the excellent translation of the Padre San- 
germano, from the Book of Imprecations, it is 
almost literally as follows : 

" False witnesses, who assert anything from 
passion, and not from love of truth— witnesses 
who affirm that they have heard or seen what 
they have not heard or seen — may all such 



224 ^-^P anc ^ Down the Irrawaddi. 

false witnesses be severely punished with 
death by that God who, through the duration of 
400,100,000 worlds, has performed every species 
of good work and exercised every virtue. I say, 
may God, who, after having acquired all know- 
ledge and justice, and obtained divinity, leaning 
upon the tree of Gaudma — may this God, with 
the Nat who guards him day and night — that 
is, the Assura Nat — -and the giants, slay these 
false witnesses." 

[Here follows the invocation of many Nats.] 

"May all those who, in consequence of bribery 
from either party, do not speak the truth, merit 
the eight dangers and the ten punishments. 
May they be infected by all sorts of diseases. 

"Moreover, may they be destroyed by ele- 
phants ; bitten and slain by serpents ; killed 
and devoured by the devils and giants, the 
tigers, and other ferocious animals of the forest. 

" May whoever asserts a falsehood be swal- 
lowed by the earth ; may he perish by sudden 
death ; may a thunderbolt from heaven slay 
him — the thunderbolt which is one of the arms 
of the Nat Deva. 

" May false witnesses die of bad diseases ; be 



The Oath and Imprecations. 225 

bitten by crocodiles ; be drowned. May they 
become poor ; hated of the king. May they 
have calumniating enemies. May they be 
driven away ; may they become utterly wretch- 
ed ; may every one ill-treat them and raise law- 
suits against them. May they be killed with 
swords, lances, and every sort of weapon. May 
they be precipitated into the eight great hells, 
and the one hundred and twenty smaller ones. 
May they be tortured. May they be changed 
into dogs. And if, finally, they become men, 
may they be slaves a thousand and ten thousand 
times. May all their undertakings, thoughts, 
and desires ever remain as worthless as a heap 
of cotton burnt by the fire. 

" I WILL SPEAK THE TRUTH. If I Speak not 

the truth, may it be through the influence of 
the laws of demerit, viz. : passion, anger, folly, 
pride, false opinion, immodesty, hard-hearted- 
ness and skepticism ; so that when I and my re- 
lations are on land, land animals — as tigers, 
elephants, buffaloes, poisonous serpents, scor- 
pions, etc. — shall seize, crush, and bite us, so 
that we shall certainly die. Let the calamities 

occasioned by fire, water, rulers, .thieves, and 
10* 



226 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

enemies oppress and destroy us, till we perish 
and come to utter destruction. 

" May we be subject to all the calamities that 
are within the body, and all that are without 
the body. May we be seized with madness, 
dumbness, blindness, deafness, leprosy, and hy- 
drophobia. May we be struck with thunder- 
bolts and lightning, and come to sudden death. 

"In the midst of not speaking the truth may 
I be taken with vomiting clotted black blood, 
and suddenly die before the assembled people. 
When I am going by water, may the water 
Nats assault me, the boat be upset, and the 
property lost ; and may alligators, porpoises, 
sharks, or other sea-monsters, seize and crush 
me to death ; and when I change worlds, may 
I not arrive among men or Nats, but suffer un- 
mixed punishment and regret, in the utmost 
wretchedness, among the four states of pun- 
ishment — Hell, Preitta, Beasts, and Athurakai. 

"But if I speak the truth, may I and my rela- 
tions, through the influence of the ten laws of 
merit, and on account of the efficacy of truth, be 
freed from all calamities within or without the 
body ; and may evils which have not yet come 



Woman in Burmah. 227 

be warded far away. May the ten calamities, 
and the five enemies also, be kept far away. 
May the thunderbolts and lightning, the Nat of 
the waters, and all sea-animals, love me, that I 
may be safe from them. May my prosperity 
increase like the rising sun and the waxing 
moon; and may the seven possessions, the 
seven laws, and the seven merits of the vir- 
tuous, be permanent in my person ; and when 
I change worlds, may I not go to the four states 
of punishment, but attain the happiness of 
men and Nats, and realize merit, reward and 

PERFECT CALM." 



Socially, the women of Burmah enjoy, as 
I have said before, in some respects the largest 
liberty. They are not immured, as elsewhere 
in the East. Among themselves they go and 
come at will. They interchange visits, and are 
admitted to the privilege of a friendly inter- 
course as free as that which their most in- 
dulged sisters of the West enjoy. They are 
great gadders-about, famous peddlers of small 
talk and neighborly scandal. Every village 
l^as its Mrs. Grundy, and wherever two or 



228 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

three are gathered together in her name there 
is much unbosoming. The did-you-ever and 
no-I-never, of this land of tea-fights, quilting, 
and liberty, are familiar in their mouths as 
household words, though the words be hard to 
pronounce. 

They have their spinnings and their knittings 
and their darnings, their cuttings-out and bast- 
ings and back-stitchings ; instead of crochet 
they have gold-flower embroidery; the latest 
stories of Umerapoora or Prome, brought by 
some neighbor in the up-river trade who went 
up with cotton goods and came back with 
petroleum, serves them for the last new novel ; 
and they have got as far as sandal powder on 
their way to rouge. They have their love- 
affairs and engagements and breakings-ofF, their 
small jealousies and heart-burnings — the vani- 
ties for the girls, and the household cares for 
the matrons. So that, in these respects, our 
freest western society has no advantages to 
offer them. 

Marriage is a civil contract merely, and 
divorce easy to the disgusted wife ; but the 
husband cannot repudiate the wife, except by 



Wives and Concubines. 229 

expensive legal forms. The law recognizes but 
one wife ; and though unlimited concubinage is 
allowed, that institution is ordered in a manner 
at once flattering and convenient to the true 
Mica, the wife of the bosom. The concubines 
must serve her in menial offices ; when she 
goes abroad they must attend her with drink- 
ing cup, sandal box and fan ; and at the death 
of the husband they become her life-slaves. 

No married woman can be seized upon for 
the royal pleasure ; and that was a noble inno- 
vation of Alompra's, when he seated his wife 
on the throne beside him in full court. 

At a wedding, the bride is made much of, 
and consoled with compliments and gifts. On 
the bridal day, according to Symes, the happy 
man must beseech her acceptance of three 
loofighees or lower garments, three tubhecks or 
sashes, and three pieces of white muslin. 

But on the other hand, it must be con- 
fessed, woman in Burmah is subject to certain 
political disabilities to which the " strong- 
minded" of her sisterhood — if aught so loud 
and ugly existed among them — might, with a 
fair show of justice, demur. 



230 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

They have no voice in the imposition of 
taxes, although, as will be seen presently, they 
often pay those taxes with their bodies. Like 
the female of every other kind, they are not 
permitted to emigrate, though often married, 
with or without their consent, to foreigners. 
Although they are frequently sold into prosti- 
tution by their parents or the State, voluntary 
prostitution is punished with the utmost rigors 
of the social code ; and when a suburb of Ran- 
goon, called Mima-shun-rua, was set apart for 
the daughters of shame, its outcast denizens 
were regarded as slaves of the State. 

The evidence of two women will not balance 
the weight of one man's, nor can a woman enter 
a hall of justice or even stand in the porch, but 
must deliver her testimony from the house-top. 
If the head of a family have fallen into arrears 
for his head-tax, and become liable to a sum- 
mary visit from the Myosugi with an armed 
posse, he raises the money on the body of a 
daughter, or even, if the case be pressing, of his 
wife. The value of an old woman's body 
where indemnity is to be paid for her accidental 
killing, is about seventeen ticals, or ten dollars. 



Meenyoo on Wives. 231 

In the laws of Meenyoo, which are the Law 
of Burmah, it is laid down that " the punish- 
ment of his crimes, who judges iniquitously and 
decides falsely, shall be greater than though he 
had slain one thousand women, one hundred 
poonghees, or one thousand horses;" and in 
another place, pious Burmans are advised that 
" the good wives are of three sorts — the wife 
that is like unto a sister, the wife that is like 
unto a friend, and the wife that is like unto a 
slave ; but the best of these is the wife that is 
like unto a slave." 



232 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

HOW IT SEEMS TO OWN A WOMAN LITTLE MAYOUK HER AD- 
VENTURES. 

When our New York Howadji and his friend, 
the Pacha, were in the desert together, under 
the eyes of Kadra, the Pacha was seized " with 
a laudable curiosity to know how it would 
'seem' to kill a man." So I, yielding to the 
flattering temptation of these women-laws, be- 
came possessed of a devil of longing to know 
how it would seem to own a woman — some 
fair and tender slave who should fan me when 
I slept, knuckle and knead me in the diurnal 
shampoon, lull me into high-noon naps with 
the tinkling of her patola and the comfort of 
household songs, and sew on my moral but- 
tons. 

Accordingly I imparted my romantic whim 
to my Chittagong Sancho, who forthwith set 
about finding a mima to my mind, and Mayouk 
was the fruit of his^ faithful search. 



Little Mayouk. 233 

Poor little Mayouk ! her father owed a hun- 
dred and fifty rupees; his goods had all gone 
in the fire that swept away the old town when 
we applied our rocket-torches to its tinder 
houses; his creditor was stern, and the law 
was plain ; so they were trying to raise the 
money on little Mayouk, who had nothing at 
all to do with the negotiations, save to make 
the most of her prettiness, and wait at home for 
the coming man. Goods like her were not a 
drug in town, nor were buyers, such as I, 
plentiful and competing. I had at once the 
rupees and the Quixotic sentiment — my com- 
rades were rarely possessed of the two together. 
So we were not long in concluding " an opera- 
tion." 

Insolvent parents demanded two hundred 
rupees — cautious Chittagong offered one hun- 
dred ; insolvent parents pleaded their poverty 
— insensible Chittagong fairly boasted of mine ; 
insolvent parents extolled the charms, the ac- 
complishments, the virtues of the chattel — a 
rose among the mimas, a singing-bird in the 
porch, an ant in the house, a bee in the bazaar- 
practical Chittagong made light of her endow 



234 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

ments and magnified the rupees. So they 
compromised, and closed at a hundred and fifty 
— Mima, who had been plainly bored through- 
out, seeming merely glad that the thing was 
over. 

Then we chewed some pickled tea all round 
according to law, the old people laughing con- 
sumedly at the wry faces I made over that 
imposing ceremony ; and I took little Mayouk's 
hand, and should have said something tender 
to her, only she laughed. I besought her to 
promise me that she would be happy, and she 
said she thought she could be, with a pair of 
ear-horns and a new loonghee. I assured her 
she had but to give utterance to the wish and 
she was free as air; and then she laughed 
again. 

So I built a little house for Mayouk next 
door to her mother's, and gave her some fine 
clothes, and the ear-horns, and a goat, and a 
new idol, and did not teach her English in 
exchange for Burmese which she did not teach 
me ; and I employed the old lady to do my 
washing, and paid the old gentleman to take 
charge of my pony, and was responsible for 



Little Mayouk. 235 

the "family-tax," and all that sort of thing. 
So little Mayouk was very happy and vir- 
tuous, and I was very virtuous and proud. 

When little Mayouk came tripping, at dawn, 
from the tank among the mangoes at the 
turn of the Pagoda road — barefoot and with 
glancing ankles ; her raven hair twisted in 
a barbaric top-knot ; the pendulous lobes of her 
ears jeweled with young lilies; the "bare 
possibility" of a dainty bosom peeping over 
the top of her engi ; her right leg, nut-brown 
and springy, showing to mid-thigh where her 
loonghee opened as she stept out smartly ; her 
lips brightly parted for sherbet-draughts of the 
early air ; her teeth fairly flashing, innocent of 
betel ; her form erect and swaying ; her head 
thrown proudly back, and crowned, like Hebe's, 
with a brimming jar: at such times little 
Mayouk was the sweetest heathen unconverted. 

She was a famous story-teller, animated and 
eloquent, with an expressive countenance and 
impressive gestures. As she related the hor- 
rors and the marvels of the three days' bom- 
bardment, with Chittagong between us to in- 
terpret, she was altogether charming. 



236 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

She told how, when she was a little bazaar- 
girl and sold rice, the naked soldiers came to 
her begging handf'uls to keep them from starv- 
ing ; how, when the air was all alight with 
thunder-balls that cried " woon, woon," and 
fire-snakes (rockets) that flew through the night 
and bit the head of Shway-Dagoung, and when 
women and children clung to each other scream- 
ing in the dark, with a post in the midst of 
them to keep a family together, their faces 
turned in an agony of wonder and fear to the 
Great Dagon — then the very soldiers they had 
fed, came and strip t them naked to search 
in the hems of their garments for rubies ; and 
how, when they fled through the fiery storm 
to hide under the terrace of Shway-Dagoung, 
she bore her blind grandfather on her back. 

Little Mayouk was a good investment. When 
I left Rangoon forever, she cried, and begged 
me to take her silver spittoon for a keepsake ; 
and she promised to be a good girl, and send 
an offering to the Pagoda every new moon. 



My Adventure at Pegu. 237 



CHAPTER XXX. 

MY A D V E N T II It B A T PEGU. 

One day a message came down from the 
Myosugi, or head man, of the friendly people 
who inhabited the interior town of Pegu, still- 
ing that they had been attacked by a superior 
force of Burmese, driven from their homes, and 
compelled to take, refuge in the jungle. 

The Peguans an? naturally a brave race, en- 
tertaining a bitter hereditary hatred for the ag- 
gressive Burmese, always armed against them, 
always warring with them on continually recur- 
ring pretexts, and always disposed to join with 
any force hostile to them. They, therefore, in- 
formed the General, that if he would send a, 
small party of British troops to their aid, they 
would attack and retake the place. Meantime 
their families were in the jungle suffering great 
privation and exposure, their households scat- 
tered, and their property destroyed. 

The town of Pegu — city of the great pagoda 



238 Up and Down the. Irrawaddi. 

Shway-Madoo, the Golden Supreme — lies in a 
beautiful valley, one of the very few in that 
country which are watered throughout the dry 
season, and the one upon which the people 
depend, for the most part, for their supplies of 
rice. 

Accordingly the General determined to send 
a force to aid these poor people, and ordered 
the Phlegethon to repair to the place imme- 
diately, with — -in addition to her own crew — a 
detachment of Bengal (Sepoy) rifles, numbering 
about a hundred and fifty, a small party of 
marines from the frigate Fox (Commodore Lam- 
bert's flag-ship), and a company of sappers and 
miners, in case of the necessity arising of 
throwing up field-works, should we not suc- 
ceed in taking the town in the first assault. 

One morning, about five o'clock, when we 
were within twenty miles of Pegu, the steamer 
got aground and stuck fast. Finding that there 
was no prospect of getting nearer with her, as 
the river was very low, it was determined to 
send the force up in the boats. The steamer 
not being large enough to hold all the men, we 
had been towing astern the launch and two 



Warlike Noises. 239 

cutters of the Fox filled with sailors and ma- 
rines; and these, with our own three cutters, 
were sufficient to convey our men to the at- 
tack. 

We started soon after day-break, and pulled 
up between the high banks of the river, making 
our way past the Burmese villages that, at 
short intervals, occupied the shores — the men 
all well armed, and three surgeons, of whom I 
was one, in the boats. 

We were all on the alert, expecting an at- 
tack every moment, as we went up with the 
flood-tide, which runs in the Pegu like a mill- 
race. Soon we began to hear the native war- 
gongs beating in every direction; and the 
distant cry of warriors giving the alarm — a 
guttural, monotonous hoo-hoo — was bayed on 
every side. 

This lugubrious warning was more like the 
baying of countless dogs than any other civil- 
ized noise, and we knew that its object was to 
gather a force to intercept us, or, at all events, 
to strengthen the defense of the town of Pegu. 
Occasionally, however, we passed a Karen vil- 
lage where the inhabitants were friendly. Only 



240 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

women, and children, and old men were left in 
these places, and they saluted us joyfully with 
shouts and waving of white cloths, dancing and 
running down to the river bank in crowds, 
pointing up the stream, and hurrying us on to 
the town, which they hoped we would take. 
The higher up we got, the louder grew the 
alarm ; the gongs became as innumerable as 
the voices of runners and scouts carrying on 
the warning, and the whole produced a melan- 
choly harmony, now like the sighing of the 
wind, now like the dying away of thunder. 

All this time we were exposed to the in- 
tensest heat of a tropical sun, a heat such as 
is experienced nowhere but in Burmah; for, 
whatever may be the indications of the ther- 
mometer, heat is not felt in any other spot on 
earth as it is. in the low, flat lands along the 
delta of the Irrawaddi. It has a peculiarly de- 
pressing effect ; it makes you faint ; it seems to 
steam and stew your head, and you find your- 
self bending under it as under a great and 
growing weight. We had no awnings over the 
boats, and most of us were dressed in thick 
cloth uniform. I wore a heavy cloth navy-cap 



Sun-stroke. 241 

— the regulation cap of the Company — an un- 
dress blue cloth frock-coat, trowsers of the 
same material, and, in a belt at my waist, a 
sword and a pair of heavy ship's pistols. Very 
soon after the sun rose I had begun to experi- 
ence the wilting influence of his rays, and, as 
he mounted higher and higher, rapidly acquir- 
ing strength, I was fast becoming sick. At 
first I was seized with a slight fit of vomiting ; 
then my mind became confused. For a mo- 
ment I would forget where I was, but only for 
a moment ; the next I would recover my recol- 
lection. I had a sense of dried peas with hot 
water poured upon them, swelling in my skull; 
I became violently excited, raved, said I don't 
know what to the men around me, seized one, 
thinking he was about to attack me — and then 
fell over on my face in the bottom of the boat 
— coup de soleil ! 

How long I remained insensible I have never 
known ; but my first consciousness was of lying 
over the side of the boat, with a sailor dipping 
up water in his hat and pouring it over my 
head. My clothes were loosened as much as 

possible, and saturated with water. I recog- 

11 



242 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

nized some of the officers, particularly an 
assistant-surgeon of the " 18th Koyal Irish,'' 
my intimate friend, and was more or less 
conscious from that time that I was in a re- 
mote spot, and on a dangerous expedition, 
although I did not recollect the nature of the 
enterprise nor even the name of the country. 
In recognizing the officers, I could not recall 
their connection with the events then recur- 
ring. I heard the beating of the tomtoms 
along the land; I heard the same multitudinous 
hoo-hooing, baying, wailing, and it filled me 
with irrepressible horror at times, while at 
others it excited me to madness. 

By degrees I became more quiet, and, as soon 
as it was safe to do so, I was removed from the 
cutter to a large Burmese rice-boat, housed over 
with mats and capable of containing from a 
hundred to a hundred and fifty persons. This 
floating house had windows and doors, and had 
been fitted up with hospital traps of every sort 
— a complete surgeon's and apothecary's outfit. 
Here I was laid upon a doolee, stripped, and 
water poured on me by the bucketful, especially 
over my head and breast. The doolee was 



On a Litter. 243 

stretched in the middle of the boat, between the 
doors and windows. Occasionally, I relapsed 
into insensibility, but under the medical treat- 
ment, which was vigorous and pertinacious, I 
recovered sufficiently, every now and then, to 
recognize the faces and voices of the two medi- 
cal officers who had kindly remained in charge 
of me, as well as the doolee-bearers— half-naked 
Hindoos, who belonged to the hospital depart- 
ment — and a cabin-boy of the frigate Fox, a 
handsome, spirited little fellow of fourteen or 
thereabouts, who had been permitted to ac- 
company us for the purpose of witnessing an 
action. 

I had scarcely recovered my consciousness 
sufficiently to understand where I was and 
what had happened, when a message arrived 
from Capt. Tarleton — great-grandson, by-the- 
by, of the troublesome Tarleton of our Revolu- 
tionary war, and a dashing leader— command- 
ing these medical officers to join immediately 
their respective detachments, and to leave me 
in the best care they could provide. Accord- 
ingly, they asked whether they could safely 
leave me alone, relying upon my sense and 



244 Up and Down the Irruwaddi. 

experience to do that for myself which there 
would be no one to do for me in their absence. 
1 urged them to go. 

Shortly after they left — it seemed to me not 
more than half an hour — the little boy, of 
whom I have spoken, approached the side of 
the doolee, and, while bathing me with a 
sponge, giving me water to drink, and chang- 
ing the mustard-poultices, told me where we 
were. He said this hospital-boat had been 
moored on the side opposite the town, under a 
high bank, where there were only jungle and 
the ruins of a burnt village a few hundred 
yards off. He assured me that I had no cause 
for alarm ; that we were perfectly sale ; that 
the officers had explained to him that the boat 
had been moored there for safety, because there 
were no Burmese on that side, and that, in a 
very short time, they would rejoin us. 

My excitement was thus partially allayed, and 
I became comparatively calm ; still, that horrible 
banging of gongs, mingled with the rattling of 
musketry — for our troops were then storming 
the place — and the occasional discharge of the 
twelve-pounders we had brought up in our 



Danger- 24 J 

ooats, were, at times, frightful in their effect 
upon me, and it was with great difficulty that 
] could master the impulse to leap into the 
water and hurry toward the scene of action, 
All these sounds seemed to go through and 
through my head. The effect of the coup <k 
soldi on my sense of hearing was, to intensify 
it beyond endurance. If one of those guns had 
been fired close by my ear, it could scarcely 
have produced an effect more shocking than it- 
did at the distance of more than a mile. 

How long the engagement lasted, it is, of 
course, impossible for me, under circumstances 
of such confusion and even delirium, to re- 
member; but presently there was a pause; 
not a gong was to be heard; that dismal slogan 
was no longer to be caught; the artillery and 
musketry were still ; all was perfect silence. 
The doolee-bearers were squatting around on 
their haunches, and one or two of them had 
lighted hubble-bubbles. 

The boy went to the door, and, presently 
returning, whispered to me, seeming anxious 
to communicate something important; but, 
in my condition then, I could not under- 



246 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

stand him, and hardly gave him my attention. 
Then there was a stir among the coolies — a 
quick expression of alarm ; they laid down their 
hubble-bubbles, and went to the windows on 
the side next the bank. Immediately they 
rushed back in great confusion and terror, 
crying: " Burmee, Burmee man; Sahib, Sahib, 
Burmee man !" 

The boy again went to the door, and, after 
reconnoitering, returned and informed me that 
a large force of Burmese were gathering on the 
bank over the boat ; and, as he spoke, I could 
hear their shouts. They had come from below, 
probably, to assist their friends, but had taken 
such care to keep at a safe distance from our 
men, that they had blundered upon this boat 
in its exposed and helpless situation. There 
was hardly an appreciable interval between the 
announcement of their presence and the dis- 
charge of their muskets. The roof of the boat 
was quickly perforated in every direction, and 
bullets whistled about the bed ; they struck 
the timbers over my head, and by my side, 
and, more than once, struck the bed itself. 

With a scream of terror, the doolee-bearers 



A Hot Place. 247 

leapt into the water, and then I was alone 
with the boy. For a minute or two, there 
was a pause in the firing, the attention of the 
Burmese being distracted by the panic of the 
Hindoos ; but it was immediately resumed, this 
time directed upon the swimming coolies. 

Now, remember that I was stark naked, in- 
tensely excited (except at blessed moments of 
insensibility), in a high state of cerebral exalta- 
tion, reckless of danger, possessed by a sort of 
devil resembling mania a potu in all its pheno- 
mena. The little boy, now my only companion, 
preserving wonderful self-possession and calm- 
ness of demeanor, came to me, seized me with 
both hands, and shook me hard, as if to wake 
me. He cried: " Gret up, sir ; get up, sir ; no 
time to lose now !" and asked me if I could 
swim. I answered, " Yes," he all the time 
dragging over my arms and legs a pair of pilot- 
cloth trowsers and a pea-jacket, after which he 
led me— almost carrying me, feeble as I was — 
to the side of the boat furthest from the Bur 
mese, who, probably on hearing his exclama- 
tions, had resumed their firing, and were rapid- 
ly drilling the roof, but still afraid to come 



248 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

down upon the boat, perhaps suspecting an 
ambush. 

He led me to the door, and pointed to where, 
some five or six hundred yards up the stream, 
our boats were aground, in charge of seven or 
eight men, under command of a midshipman. 
Remember, now, that all our force was engaged 
at the town of Pegu (but how far off, or in 
what direction that lay, I knew not then); that 
there had been only a pause in their firing, 
which by this time was resumed with increased 
rattle of musketry and roar of cannon. 

Pointing to the boats, the boy asked me if I 
could swim so far. I replied, " Yes," and asked 
him if he also could. He said, " Yes.' 9 I then 
plunged into the river, and struck out in the 
direction of the boats, bidding him follow close 
behind me. I imagined at the time, though 
now I know it to have been but imagination, 
that I heard him leap in after me, and I con- 
tinued to fancy, not only that I heard him 
striking out and blowing the water, as swim- 
mers do, but that I even saw him; and I spoke 
to him frequently, believing him to be at my 
side. 



Swimming for Life. 249 

The Burmese, perceiving me as I made 
the plunge, instantly redoubled their fire, and 
bullets fell thickly around me. I could hear 
them hiss close by my head and back, pelting 
the water like nuts thrown upon the surface by 
the handful. Fortunately, the tide was in my 
favor, and I swam rapidly, being at all times 
an expert swimmer. Now I seemed to recover 
my presence of mind, and to have the balance 
of my nerves restored. I became perfectly 
calm, unalarmed — master of myself in every 
respect — with more self-possession and a cooler 
comprehension of the circumstances surround- 
ing me than I had ever had before in all my 
life : nor can I refer all of this to other than 
almost supernatural influences, though, of 
course, something is to be attributed to the 
cooling agency of the water. 

I let my body down into the stream as low 
as possible, so as to expose only the back of 
my head, thus making my human target for 
the bullets of my hunters as small as I could, 
and as low also ; for I was well aware, from 
precious experience acquired in a busy cam- 
paign, that they fire very high, holding the 
11* 



250 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

stocks of their muskets under their armpits, 
and not against their shoulders, as we do ; be- 
sides, their fire-arms are of the most wretched 
description, and every man makes his own 
powder. Their balls, therefore, generally passed 
over my head, and fell into the water, a little 
beyond them. 

I had no fear at any moment ; a strange and 
omnipotent faith in fate took possession of me ; 
I did not even take the trouble to make up my 
mind that I should escape. I literally had no 
idea that it was a possible thing for me to be 
shot then. Yet, when I had almost reached 
the boats, I was seized with extreme faintness — ■ 
whether from the reaction of hope, inspired by 
the proximity of my friends, depriving me of 
the strength and courage of despair and rage, or 
from what other cause I know not ; I became 
suddenly sick, and felt myself rapidly sinking. 
I could make but a few strokes more, holding 
up my hand, and crying for help. The smallest 
of the boats, our third cutter, with a solitary 
man in it, came to my rescue, and, just as my 
strength was finally failing, he dragged me out 
of the water. As 1 fell over between the seats, 



In the Launch. 25] 

gasping and exhausted with the shock of relief 
and safety, but by no means insensible— on the 
contrary fully appreciating my position — that 
man said to me: "I fnink' it's all up with us 
now, sir; but you stand by me, and I'll stand 
by you: we're two lonesome Yankees here." 

He then sculled his boat back to the others- 
trie Burmese, meantime , having suspended their 
fire in the direction of ;he hospital-boat. You 
must not forget the boy, whom I had quite for- 
gotten, and did not again remember until I saw 
him, some days later. When we reached the 
other boats, I was lifted into the large launch 
of the Fox under the awning (all the boats were 
now covered), and laid in the bottom, with my 
head on an ammunition-box. 

The midshipman in command of the party 
hastened to assure me that I was safe; and, 
finding me in a state of great mental excite- 
ment, endeavored to soothe me. While he was 
thus kindly employed, I became insensible for 
a time. These intervals of unconsciousness 
must have been comparatively brief, as the 
whole affair occupied oaly the middle of a day. 
I was roused by another alarm, another rapid 



252 Up and Down the IrrawaddL 

firing of musketry, and again bullets whistled 
near me ; I could see them penetrate the can- 
vas awning of our boat, making little round 
holes, which let in the hateful sunshine upon 
my face. Several struck the seats, some hit the 
sides of the boat, and some fell into the water 
close by ; but, very strangely, no man was hurt 
as yet, although all were together in this launch. 

Here, as lower down, the bank was very high 
and steep. The Burmese, who had driven me 
out of the hospital-boat, had followed me 
hither ; they were still immediately over us, so 
that, in firing, it was necessary for our men to 
elevate their muskets almost perpendicularly. 

Possessed with the energy of despair, unable 
to get their boats afloat — as there were not 
enough of them for some to defend the others 
while they worked — and seeing no hope of 
communicating with our friends on shore, who 
were engaged in the assault of the town, my 
companions were fairly brought to bay, and de- 
termined to die hard. One man after another, 
as he loaded his musket, would run out to the 
bow, "spot" his "John Burmah," and bring 
him down. 



Shields's Last Shot. 253 

The Burmese, who were arrant cowards, 
would creep cautiously forward, shoot, and 
run — firing very hastily their wretched mus- 
kets, with the most uncertain aim of the worst 
of all possible marksmen; so that, while our 
shots were never wasted, theirs had, as yet, 
done no harm. In a little while, however, one 
of our men received a ball in his shoulder — a 
flesh-wound merely, from which he soon re- 
covered, but which disabled him for the time. 

Soon after that, my countryman — he who had 
come to my rescue when I was sinking — loaded 
his musket under the awning, occupied, in his 
turn, the bow of the boat, which had just been 
vacated by another, and taking deliberate aim 
at a Burman — who, in that ridiculous spirit of 
bravado, so familiar to all who have had deal- 
ings with the tattooed rascals, was performing 
a war-dance, making grimaces, and gesticulat- 
ing with all sorts of insulting antics — shot him 
dead. Immediately a dozen muskets replied — 
fired straight at him, Quietly walking back to 
where I was lying, in the bottom of the boat, 
and laying down his musket carefully, as if he 
had merely paused to rest, or to speak to me, 



254 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

he sat clown by my side. Never suspecting that 
he was hurt, I scarcely noticed him, being oc- 
cupied with watching for the holes, which still, 
from time to time, the bullets would make in 
the awning. Presently, he laid his hand softly 
upon mine, and said: "If you ever go to Bos- 
ton, tell my mother, sir." " Why, nonsense, 
man," I exclaimed, "you're not hurt !" I stared 
in his face ; death was there, and his eyes were 
closing He made no reply, but, still clasp- 
ing my hand, fell back and died. 

After this, there was a brief pause in the 
fight ; the Burmese ceased firing, as if to de- 
liberate on some change of tactics — possibly 
with the intention of coming down on us all 
together. That was the fear we should have 
entertained all the while, had we had time to 
reflect. Now, we saw the danger plainly, and 
that something must be done promptly,, to pre 
vent them from taking us by a, coup de main. 

The midshipman, in a few hurried word?, 
asked me to suggest something. I advised him 
to load and fire the twelve-pounder in the how. 
He objected: "But you see my fire will be 
harmlessly wasted, in, the bank, far beneath 



Panic. 255 

their feet, and that, once perceived, may bring 
them down on us. It's only the sight of this 
piece, and their recollection of the noise it 
makes, and the havoc some of them have seen 
done by guns just like it, that keeps them 
where they are." 

"But," I argued, "we can't stay here for- 
ever ; our friends know nothing of our danger ; 
the Burmese will presently discover that your 
piece is harmless, from the very fact of your 
not using it ; we are only postponing the mo- 
ment of our destruction. Fire the gun — load 
it heavily with grape, and fire it into the bank, 
with all the elevation you can get. Thus you 
may terrify them, as well by the noise as by 
the cutting up of the earth beneath their feet ; 
at the same time you will have the advantage 
of communicating with our friends by the only 
means available." 

He did as I advised ; but, after the first few 
discharges, the Burmese would run up while 
our men were loading the gun, and fire upon 
them. So we lost another — not killed, but 
disabled. Then our fellows were panic-stricken ; 
they saw they could not hold their ground till 



256 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

friends came up ; they were wavering, one by 
one ; they began to hang back, and to look 
around for help — when men, under such cir- 
cumstances, begin to look away from the foe, 
the game is always up; they never will look 
back again. The midshipman suddenly cried : 
"I've done my duty; every man for himself;" 
and plunged into the river: the whole party 
followed him. Neither of the wounded men 
was seriously injured, and they were, of course, 
so occupied with the urgent danger as to forget 
their wounds ; they struck out lustily. 

Still prostrate, and weak almost to death, I 
dragged myself heavily to the side of the boat, 
and let my body roll over into the stream, like 
a log, under the full gaze of the Burmese, who, 
when they saw our men take to the water, of 
course opened fire on each black head as it 
swam away. I came last, and formed a solitary 
target for them, as I was still in the stream 
after all of my late companions were up and 
off into the jungle. I employed the same tac- 
tics as before, and with the same success — 
letting my body low down into the water, and 
swimming in a straight line directly away from 



In the Jungle. 257 

them, so as to present a mark which it would 
have been difficult for any but an expert sharp- 
shooter to hit. 

Being thus repeatedly exposed to the most 
fearful danger, and seeming to have death 
and devils crowding upon me from every 
side, I became frantic with downright rage. 
When my feet touched the mud I did not rise, 
but, keeping under water, dragged myself along 
on my belly, till I got to the bank. Then 
clambering up, I stood on the top of it, and 
shook my fists at the savages, and cursed them. 
Next I sat deliberately down on the ground, 
and exulted for a while in watching their balls 
fall short of me. After this I arose, and wan- 
dered into the jungle. 

What was the scene? — a jungle in the heart 
of Burmah, where, perhaps, no white man had 
ever been before that day ; the only passage a 
tiger-trail — a path very much like those made 
by the negroes through our southern corn-fields 
by cutting away a narrow lane of stalks. By 
this, no doubt (though tiger signs were fresh 
upon it), our men had made their way ; but 
where to look for them ? That dismal howl 



258 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

still reached my ears ; I could even hear cannon 
— but could not, if I had tried, have told in 
what direction they were. 

Don't forget, now, that I had lost all but a 
confused sense of something dangerous that 
was near, something saving that was distant. 
I had no recollection of details ; I could not 
tell on which side of the river our little army 
was ; I had never seen the town of Pegu ; I 
had forgotten all topography, all points of time, 
nor have I ever clearly recollected them since. 
It all seemed to me like a dream of some- 
thing horrible, that had happened years before. 
Even what was presently occurring around me 
seemed something that I was remembering re- 
motely, rather than the event of the moment. 
At the same time that I was conscious of the 
scene before me, and of my progress over the 
ground, I was in the maudlin state of a drunken 
man, reckless of danger ; any number of Bur- 
mese directly in my path, I should probably 
have met, then, with a laugh ; I was in the 
mood to laugh — did laugh. 

Night would before very long be upon me, 
but I cared not for that; 1 could have laid 



An Apparition. 259 

down in the tiger-trail and slept — because I 
was crazy. And yet I was not crazy ; for I 
knew there were enemies, and I hated them ; 
I knew there was danger, and I was cunning. 
To a degree, I was delirious ; and yet some of 
my faculties were intensified, like my physical 
senses. I was delirious only in not compre- 
hending the danger to the extent of dying with 
fear. . 

Recollect that I was bare-headed and bare- 
footed ; my jacket was open, and my breast 
exposed to the sun ; I had dragged myself 
through the black, oozy slime of an Indian 
river full of crocodiles ; I was ugly as Satan, 
from head to foot, and like him in many other 
respects. In this plight I stumbled forward, 
through the jungle. 

Presently a form started up from between 
the canes and stood before me, across the path. 
I thought it was that of a Burman — an armed 
enemy — and my first feeling was one of levity. 
The next instant I recognized the blue jacket 
of one of our own men. He belonged to the 
boat's party, had escaped, and hid himself 
there, and (Heaven knows how !) had recog- 



260 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

irized me. When his hand grasped one of mine, 
and I put the other upon his shoulder, and 
looked into his familiar face — when I saw in 
him a companion and a. friend, and we two 
stood together there, in that place of wits' ends 
and vague fears — I became aware of my situ- 
ation with a horrible shock, and fell to the 
ground, sensible, at the same time, of wretched- 
ness and of relief, of danger and of protection — 
of one as much as the other. Then he raised 
me, and made me realize again, as well as he 
could, who he was, and where I was ; and he 
lifted me up, and carried me forward, a part 
of the while on his back and sometimes in his 
arms, stopping, now and then, to rest. 

Then, at last — and God knows, God only 
knows how it all was ! — I do remember being 
with a party of our men ; I do remember some 
Sepoys in British uniform ; I do remember 
officers, soldiers, sailors, friendly Peguans. At 
this moment I vividly recall such a group, and 
I recollect standing in the midst of them. Then, 
I remember, there was a sudden stir, and this 
party broke away from me amid rattling of 
musketry and the shouts of officers, and the 



Bedeviled. 261 

next instant I was in the water again. I, too, 
had partaken of the alarm, but, not understand- 
ing its nature, had rushed down the bank, and 
into the river, and was striking out once more 
for the very shore whence I had just been 
driven. I swam across and clambered up the 
bank. 

Is there anything picturesquely frightful in 
story — anything in German legend of solitary 
men beset by fiends, and beasts of hideous 
aspect and horrible cries— that will do to 
describe this by ? Think of the knight in 
Undine, as he rides through the haunted for- 
est, waylaid by Calibanic shapes; or take the 
lady in Comus, put a pea-jacket and regulation- 
trowsers on her, and you have me. 

Everything proper to a safe man's mind had 
left me; nothing remained but cunning and 
insensible courage. I had never once thought 
of praying, of pleading for mercy; I had never 
once asked forgiveness for my sins ; I had not 
given a thought to my family or friends ; I 
was busy only with the damnable inventions, 
the hellish traps, set for me, and I remember 
the Bothwell-like resistance I felt — I feel it 



262 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

now. Then I speculated : " Perhaps by wan- 
dering along this bank I can reach some friend- 
ly village; perhaps by following this river I 
shall find human habitations, where I shall be 
received hospitably." I was even possessed 
with a delirious hope that I should reach Ran- 
goon — which now and then I would clearly 
recollect — by pursuing the stream down to the 
bay. 

So, groping along in what I supposed to be 
that direction, I had gone perhaps a mile or 
two, when I saw a small boat— such as is 
called a sampan in China ; I have forgotten the 
Burmese name — lying close under the bank. 
It was covered with mats, arched like the awn- 
ing of a western wagon : the poorest fishermen 
of Burmah house their families in such craft, as 
the Chinese do. I came upon it suddenly ; on 
the bank, immediately above it, but below me, 
stood two natives — tall, stalwart fellows, tat- 
tooed from their navels to their ankles — with 
paddles in their hands, but not armed. 

Now, observe that the Burmese, both men 
and women, have their ears perforated with 
very large holes (indeed, a circular piece seems 



Mutual Embarrassment. 263 

to be punched out of the lobe), in which the 
women wear gold, brass, or copper ornaments, 
sometimes of great weight — not in the shape 
of rings, but cylindrical — and the men carry 
cigars ; indeed, by means of this hole, they 
make the ear a sort of rack to hang many little 
things upon. All the hostile Burmese I had 
seen during the campaign invariably wore tiny 
red flags in these holes ; while all the Peguans, 
and other friendly natives, wore white ones. 
But these two men had neither ; they appeared 
to be harmless fishermen (perhaps Karens), 
who were glad to hide themselves away, and 
had not yet been found by any of the Burmese 
recruiting officials, and pricked into the service 
at the point of the lance. 

When I came upon them, they uttered an ex- 
clamation of great alarm, and rushed towards 
the river ; but when they got to the bank they 
stopped, looked at each other and at me, spoke 
together, stood transfixed in wonder. I had 
come suddenly from the side opposite to that on 
which the British were ; they could make out 
neither my race nor my color. My hue was 
that of the river-mud, but my hair was differ- 



to J Up and I )ov> n the [i ruw addi, 
(Mn 1 1 inn theirs, and my dress also, [f they had 

0V01' SOOU an Englishman, they WOUld, by the 

latter, have taken me for our. But what could 
they understand from my making straight up to 
them, and instantly laying my hands out' upon 
a shoulder of each? I had no arms; they had 
been taken from me in the outtev before l was 
removed to the hospital boat. With the 
savage's quiok appreciation of danger, they at 
onoe peroeived that 1 was helpless in that 
respect ; l>u t they knew not how to regard me 
in ot hers. 

M v head, it an enemy's, was worth five hun- 
dred rupees to them ; but, then, ifit should hap- 
pen to belong to u friendh Englishman, it was 
worth a thousand suoh heads as theirs if 1 
were an enemy, five hundred rupee's was the 
royal reward offered for u ; but if a friend, they 
and their families and kindred would have died 
a death for every hair they hurt. So, puzzled, 
they stood with their paddles in their hands, 
making no demonstration o\ anger or o( fear j 
they stared like children at me, but did not 
move, 

For a tew moments 1 held them thus, look 



'•■ \'-a< e the Music/' 265 

ing them itraight in the face* Then, to make 

myself understood as well an I could, I pointed 
1,0 the boat) and, touching my forehead and 
breast with my clasped hand* — ai in the cui 
torn in Burrnah to expreaH respect or gratitude, 
or to >*.sk a favor—*] appealed to them* I laid 
the palms of my hands flat together, and said 
" Yangooji) Ydngoon, twfy twaj bucksheeth 9 buck* 

fJlCCih do? hurra hue la keen k do" — a jargon oi 
mixed Burmese and HindoHtanee, both ihock- 
ingly broken, meaning, "1 will give you a 
sight of presents if you will take roe in that 
boat to Rangoon*" 

After consulting together with hurried gei 
tores, they Led me, gently hut firmly, one by 
one wrist* and the other hy the other, down 
into the boat, and« placing me in the stern, 
indicated to me to hold on by the top of the 

sampan, which came op to my waist* 1 bey 

then got into the how, and pushed off with 
their paddles to the middle of the stream* 

As J watched their movements, J was occu- 
pied with but One thought, and that was never 
to turn my baek to them. All ray intelligence* 

all my cunning, all that J war. capable of .. 
12 



266 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

human being, was concentrated in that, "don't 
turn your back on them." I had no arms, not 
even a stick, nothing but my nails and teeth. 
So I watched them impishly. 

I could still hear noises— a confused clangor 
came from a distance to my ears like something 
that one dreams of; but it was real noise — a noise 
of a far country ; of tigers, and elephants, and 
monkeys, and wild dogs ; of gods and a tattooed 
people ; of crocodiles and great pagodas — all 
audible heathendom conglomerated into one 
diabolical howl ! I cannot describe it ; I can- 
not analyze it as a noise ; I cannot tell you 
what particular big gun it sounded like, how 
now it clattered like an omnipresent tin-pan, 
or this time " went off" like a park of sixty- 
pounders; but I can tell you that it sounded 
like all " Afric's sunny fountains and India's 
coral strand" — drunk ; I hope you can under- 
stand that. 

I had let myself somehow into the idea 
that my Charons were going to Rangoon. 
For one instant I turned my eyes away 
from their faces to the scene before me ; the 
next, the bow of the boat was driven fast into 



Alone. 267 

the- mud of the opposite shore. They leaped 
to land and ran up the bank, and from that 
hour I never saw them again ; they left me 
there alone. 

A large tree grew out of the bank near the 
spot, and its roots hung over and ran down to 
the water ; it was a solitary tree ; all the rest 
was cane. I could see the black posts, with a 
few bamboos still standing, of a house — not 
very near, but at no great distance ; and, here 
and there, others like them, as if the ruins of 
a village from which the inhabitants had been 
driven by robbers. One often sees in Bur m ah 
three or four houses together, thus charred and 
half fallen — all that is left by the dacoits of 
some little town. 

From the moment the men disappeared I 
forgot their existence ; to lose sight of them 
was to lose all recollection of them, care for 
them, fear of them. I never once contemplated 
the possibility of their returning with compan- 
ions, although, had I been in a condition to 
reflect, I must have known that they would 
inevitably pursue an object of such wonder, to 
discover whence it came and what it meant. 



268 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

But then my mind would follow up no idea; 
I was alive only to the instantaneous event. 
I had the momentary instinct of danger ; with 
it came the momentary instinct of resistance. 
For that, my cunning was beyond all cultiva- 
tion : it was the animal's cunning — memory, 
only so far as the present occasion called up 
memory to my protection. 

I thought, "What shall I do next?" It was 
growing late, and, I fancied, even dark — was I 
to remain there all night ? I looked at the 
jungle — I looked at the river; at once I filled 
the one with reptiles, and the other with fierce 
beasts. Was I to lie there and die ? Then rage 
seized me ; rage, rage, rage, wholly possessed 
me — a determination to conquer all this, and 
to come out of it safe and triumphant. When 
I asked myself the question, " Must I die 
here ?" it was only to answer, " No," almost 
with a shout. Then I thought of a weapon— 
where I was, there was not even a paddle. 

I crept under the cover of the boat to look 
for a knife. A woman and a child ! Under 
the sampan was a woman with a little 
baby! 



We Two. 269 

She crouched in her death-fear ; she had 
made no sign, betrayed no curiosity. The 
Burmese woman is too well trained to make 
her existence apparent in the presence of men, 
unless she is called. for. There she had been 
hiding, stifling her baby between her breasts 
to smother its small cry, and, like myself, 
wondering what would come next. I crept 
in on my hands and knees, and we squatted 
face to face. To me, she was an angel — the 
realization of all that is beautiful in heaven. 
To her, I was hell — a black, fiendish thing, of 
which she had a superstitious horror as fright- 
ful as it was vague. I was a something that 
was cruel, something that killed, something 
that fired great guns and made infernal noises 
and ghastly gashes, something that, wherever 
it went, spread death and flames before it, and 
left ashes and dead bodies behind. 

For a minute, we stared at each other. The 
child uttered a feeble wail ; she hugged its 
face closer to her bosom, and choked out the 
cry; she held it fast with both her hands and 
shrank away from me as far as the boat would 
permit. She was naked to the waist — Bur- 



270 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

mese women generally are, after they have 
borne children. 

The remembrance I have of that woman 
now, is the remembrance that a jaded and 
wounded man must have of a cool pillow, a 
cup of water, and a tender hand. 

I put my palms together with a gesture of 
respect and tenderness, and cried : " Yay, yay, 
yay," — " Water, water, water." As soon as 
she heard my voice, she seemed to be pos- 
sessed with a new horror, and at the same 
time to imagine that some conflict was about 
to occur between us — that something was to 
be threatened on my part, and to be feared on 
hers. So, turning up the palm of her hand, 
she pressed me vehemently to go away, and 
iterated: " Twa, twa, twa," — "go, go, go," as 
fast as she could utter it. I repeated my ges- 
ture ; this time prostrating my forehead to the 
floor before her, I made suppliant salaams, 
after the Burmese fashion, and cried again : 
" Yay, yay, yay." At last she gave me to 
drink ; turning to her side, she took from an 
earthen vessel some water in a small lacquered 
cup, and handed it to me — still clasping her 



Coming at Last. 271 

child to her breast — and, on my eagerly 
snatching it, shrank back immediately. 

You remember the story of Mungo Park, 
and the African woman who brought him 
milk to drink, and sang to him the song of 
the " poor white man," who had *no mother, 
and "no wife to grind his corn?" 

That water restored me, filled me with new 
confidence, made me quite calm and even 
thoughtful again ; and so, seeing the great 
horror with which I inspired the woman, I left 
her and returned to my place outside. I took 
with me a carved rice-stick which I found in 
a pot, such as is used throughout that country 
to stir rice with while it is cooking. I waited 
with this in my hand, I should never be able to 
guess how long, or how short a time— it might 
have been hours, it might have been but a few 
minutes. 

For some time I had heard no guns or 
cries ; all had been quiet. But now there 
came from a distance the shouts of a number 
of men ; they rose on the air and grew louder 
and louder, soon separating, so that I could 
distinguish individual voices. At first, there 



272 Up and Down the IrrawaddL 

was the same dismal baying I have already 
described ; next came human articulations, 
which, however, I could not understand. 
Then there was a crash in the jungle, and 
some eighty or ninety men — as was afterwards 
estimated— burst through the canes, and stop- 
ped very near the boat. They were in hot 
haste ; I could not tell whether they were 
pursuing or pursued. All were armed ; and 
the tattooed devils wore red flags in their ears, 
every man of them. They stood startled at the 
water's edge, and wondered at me. Breath- 
less as they were, they stopped and reflected. 
Some turned to each other and talked hur- 
riedly together ; some brandished their wea- 
pons, and looked as if about to use them. 

Thus we stood ; I alone in the boat, brandish- 
ing the stick ; my hair matted with mud, which 
by this time had dried ; my pea-jacket wide 
open, and my exposed breast as black as my 
face ; unarmed — a white man and a stranger ; to 
many of them a new creature altogether, even 
if I had presented my ordinary appearance ; 
but in that aspect, to all of them, a thing of 
peculiar dread, operating upon their supersti- 



Cunning. 273 

tious terrors. For the simple reason that they 
could not account for me, they were awfully 
afraid of me. 

That cunning, which I have described to 
you as being all that was left to me, again 
filled me with a sense of power and safety, 
which it is quite impossible to explain to you 
now. I felt that I could outwit them, that 
I could seize the thousand doubts by which 
they were perplexed, and on the strength of 
which I was sure they would not dare to touch 
me. They could not know whether I was friend 
or foe. Why should I be thus helpless and alone, 
if I were of the number of their victorious 
enemies? There were Englishmen about the 
person of their king; theii officers of highest 
rank were foreign ; there were Englishmen (so 
it was afterward reported) in that very town, 
fighting for its defense. 

Three men stepped in front, and a few feet 
in advance of the party. One of them had on 
a red jacket, with gold or yellow stripes— it 
might have been a marine's jacket which he had 
bought or stolen. He wore, also, the gilt 
helmet, which distinguishes their officers, and 
12* 



274 Up an ^ Down the Irrawaddi. 

a red breech-cloth was folded voluminously 
about his thighs. He was tattooed from the 
navel to the ankles, and his complexion was 
much lighter than the rest, as is usual with 
the men of rank, who are protected from the 
sun by umbrellas carried over their heads when 
they go out. This man, also, had red flags in 
his ears ; he carried a musket and a dhar. 

His two companions seemed to be subordi- 
nates ; they were rude, and more savage-look- 
ing than he ; their complexions were darker, 
and they wore on their heads only a bit of 
red cloth. Both were armed with d liars and 
lances, the latter having strips of the same red 
stuff twisted round them, a foot or so from the 
point, to form streamers. 

The herd behind stood still, while these three 
seemed to be taking my case into consideration 
They would cautiously approach me, and then 
retire and consult ; this manoeuvre they re- 
peated frequently. Finding, then, that it was 
necessary for me to act promptly, in order to 
turn their hesitancy to my advantage, I almost 
prayed for a hint — and immediately the idea of 
playing the madman flashed upon me, It 



The Crazy Dodge. 275 

seemed to come from Heaven. I knew that 
savages set up madmen in their temples and 
worship them, accepting their ravings as 
oracles. I knew that if I could make them 
believe that I was mad, I should not only be 
protected by them, but regarded as something 
almost divine. 

So I beckoned to them to come to me, 
dancing as I did so, yelling, shouting, and 
pulling my hair; taking off my jacket, I threw 
it down upon the deck of the boat and stamped 
on it ; I capered, I made strange noises, and 
I sang — all the while beckoning them to 
approach. 

The chief came first of all. He walked 
toward me very slowly and cautiously, halting 
every few steps. But I sharply commanded 
him to come on board, and he came; so we 
stood together on the deck of the little boat. 
I laid my hands upon his shoulders as I had 
placed them upon the shoulders of the two 
boatmen. He stood perfectly erect. 

Now here was the scratch ; I knew that I 
must make him crouch — the Burman comes 
down, on his haunches to every superior, 



276 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

whether of his own or another race; until that 
man crouched, my life was not worth a curse. 
The success of my experiment depended on 
that ; he must do it. I pressed him down by 
main force to the deck, stamped my feet, and 
made faces at him. Down he went, at last, 
squatting low on his haunches and holding his 
hands together in the true Burmese style. 

His dhar was suspended by a red cord which 
passed over his right shoulder and under his left 
arm, and he still held his musket at his side. 
with the butt of it on the deck. Stooping down, 
but carefully avoiding every attitude resembling 
his own, I took hold of the gun, and we held 
it together — he with his right hand, and 1 with 
mine. Then I signed to him to give it up to 
me. The "Zw«" and the "yay," I had used 
before, were the only Burmese words I could 
remember. I knew not the word for " give," 
but I did know the gesture for "I will take ;" 
so shaking the musket violently, and angrily 
threatening him with my voice, and with 
"faces," I made him understand that much, 
and he surrendered his gun. I laid it down on 
the deck and put my foot upon it. Then re- 



Armed. 277 

peating the same pantomime, I next pulled the 
red cord by which his dhar was suspended over 
his head, and held that also. 

All that may pass for courage, but it was 
nothing of the kind. A glimmer of the truth 
had but to creep across the minds of these 
men — they had but to guess my artifice — they 
had but to suspect that I might, after all, be 
no madman, but an enemy — and quick death 
would be delightful to the fate that I must 
suffer. Intellectual mastery of the occasion 
was all that could serve my turn — cunning, and 
nothing but cunning. I had no friend nor 
weapon — I had even thrown away my stick — 
when that man gave up his dhar to me. Then, 
standing erect before him, in the attitude of a 
master, I told him to twah, and he twahcd. 

And I actually had a musket and a sword ! I 
cannot tell you with what exulting joy I looked 
on them, and wondered if all God's beautiful 
earth was enough to buy them from me. 

Now I am naturally not a brave man ; I am 
too excitable. I have not coolness, " nerve ;" 
I have only the passion of courage. But in that 
moment, I had the heart of the wounded war- 



278 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

rior who only asks for a wall to set his back 
to, and a weapon. I had been hunted, baited, 
it seemed to me, the whole day long ; when 
these dogs were not present in person, their 
phantoms were there, ten times more devilish 
than they. All the hatred in my heart was 
uppermost, and with that sword in my hand, I 
felt capable of hacking the whole pack in 
pieces. 

This will explain to you the appearance 
of intrepidity ; I believe the arrantest coward 
that ever trembled would have felt just as 
defiant, on that spot and in that predicament, 
as I did. Not only do I believe that no unde- 
veloped courage of mine had anything to do 
with it, but I am sure that the insanity of fear 
was the whole secret of my apparent heroism. 
[ mean that imagination, inspired by fear, had 
exalted me for the time — made me superior to 
the occasion ; I saw more in the weapon than 
was really in it. 

Now I went through the same pantomime 
with the two others, only they approached me 
crouching lower and lower from the first, until, 
when they reached me, they were already 



Ugly Customers, 279 

quite down on their haunches. Perhaps, he- 
cause, being too suddenly reassured, I was off 
my guard for a moment, I squatted down be- 
side them in order to get closer to their faces. 
It was a dangerous mistake. Unmeaning, even 
absurd as it may appear to you, that posture is 
everything to a Burman ; for him it has grave 
significance in religion and social intercourse. 
But I did so stoop, and one of them — I re- 
member their faces perfectly— was a stupid- 
looking fellow, with a rather good-natured ex- 
pression, if he had any at all ; the other was a 
dark, scarred, scowling ruffian, who looked 
altogether dacoit-like— a practiced brigand, and 
a born cut-throat. 

Now, mind you, this is the impression they 
left upon my memory, or my imagination : 
I don't mean to insist that they did really 
look so ; for, likely enough, if I could see 
them now, I should be ashamed of the injus- 
tice I have done them both. I caught their 
colors from my fancy and my fears. You have 
only the facts that they were two dangerous 
men, and that they were there. The picture 
they impressed upon my mind is, no doubt, a 



280 Up and Down the Irrawaddi, 

daguerreotype of my mental condition then ; 
just as I believed I heard the boy in the water, 
and spoke to him, although he was far off. 

But there were the two men, squatting side 
by side. I seized the dhar of the foolish-look- 
ing fellow, and tried to pull the cord which 
held it, over his head. Both had laid down 
their lances ; their dhars were sheathed, and 
their hands pressed together. When I made 
the attempt on my foolish friend's sword, he 
smiled — I remember how— a silly, childish, 
Indian smile, like that of a slave whose master 
condescends to jest with him. But his ugly 
comrade did not smile — far otherwise. He laid 
his hand upon the other's dhar as I was in the 
act of removing it, and, holding it fast, shook 
his head in a threatening way, as if, less super- 
stitious and more cunning than the rest, he had 
already half detected me. 

" He's trying you"— the thought came to me 
with such suddenness and force as to produce 
the impression of a warning, actually whispered 
in my ear. He was trying me. He knew that 
if I were really mad, this attempt to thwart me 
would be of no avail ; whereas, if I were merely 



Erin go Bragh ! 281 

dissembling, I should probably be frightened, 
or, at least, confused. 

Whether all that did really pass through 
his mind, God only knows; but, certainly, 
I made my sagacity his. I was careful 
to betray no astonishment, no alarm ; but, 
without agitation, stooping down, I took up 
the musket which the first man had left, very 
coolly and deliberately placed the muzzle to 
his chin — and pointed to the dhar. He in- 
stantly and eagerly jerked off his own dhar, and 
laid it at my feet. Then, leaving their lances, 
both twahed when I told them, and went back 
to their party. 

They had hardly left, when a remote noise 
of many feet and voices grew into a regular 
rush and an Irish yell. A party of wild bog- 
trotters of the "80th" came down upon these 
Burmese, fired volleys right and left, and then 
charged them. That moment was to me the 
most dangerous in the whole affair, because 
these fellows would not recognize me — would 
not believe in me. They would not discover 
in time that I was one of their comrades, who 
had got into such an infernal plight. At first 



282 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

I thought of hallooing to them ; but in another 
moment I was hiding myself under the cover 
of the boat. I felt that if I but showed just 
one hair of my head, there would be fifty bul- 
lets through me in a flash. They would fire, of 
course, at any head emerging from that boat. 

Good God ! how long it was ! the poor 
woman, paralyzed with fear, crouching oppo- 
site me, and I, shutting out the light from my 
eyes, awaiting a horrible death at the hands 
of my own friends— death after all. 

But there was an end of it by-and-by. Whe- 
ther they heard the recall, or had been ordered 
to return immediately, I know not ; but they 
went back over the bank, and I could hear the 
glorious brogue, as they hurrahed and shouted 
to each other. As the last man disappeared, I 
ran after him, dragged myself up the bank, and 
cried: "Help, help, boys !" as loud as I could; 
some of them returned, thinking, perhaps, that 
one of the party was hurt. 

When the sergeant — who was behind the 
rest, and, therefore, the first to hear my cry, 
and turn — saw me, he presented his bayonet 
close to my head. I was down then, and 



On a Litter Again. 283 

quite helpless. He asked me " who the hell" 
I was, and where I came from. They at first 
took me for a renegade, and all came crowd- 
ing around me. But one recognized my 
navy-blue trowsers, and said: "Why, don't 
you see he is one of the ship's men ;" and 
another, who, the day before, as we were 
steaming up the river, had come to me for some 
tobacco, said : " I know him — that's the doctor, 
that's the doctor of the ship. Good God ! 
where did he come from ?" Then they put me 
into a doolee, which had been brought with 
the party, and carried me some little distance, 
where I found myself among officers and per- 
sonal friends. 

One circumstance will serve to show the 
state of my mind at this time : As I lay in the 
doolee, a Burman passed by, and, although he 
was a friend, the sight of him excited me so, 
that I struggled to take a musket from a soldier 
who was walking by the side of the litter, to 
shoot the fellow with. My rage was still upon 
me. It was singular how it drove off even 
gratitude — the brought-to-bay feeling would 
not leave me yet. 



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place W ; 

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0*\ N - - : : . . . - .-. ..' N . . m I ! § 

ship gu - : . ..' ta &$ with We started 

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in kftots . :.'.;..>:.;.:.. 



In the Dark. 285 

often chime in against themselves. That the 
boatswain was a good man is shown by his 
having been intrusted with the command of 
this boat, to take her through an enemy's 
country at night. 

When we started, night was falling rapidly, 
and waiting for orders from the captain, who 
was detained, we lost the best part of the tide. 
All were armed, except me ; I was still without 
hat, or shoes, or shirt, or a weapon. We 
pulled along with perfect confidence until it 
was quite dark. There was no moon. We 
knew that the Burmese were scattered, and 
were not likely to attack us ; but as the dark- 
ness deepened, there came over us the gloom 
of mystery, and an indefinite apprehension. 
The men fell into profound silence, but pulled 
steadily and " with a will," so as to make the 
most of the tide. 

At last the ebb began to slack, and before 
we had accomplished one-third of the distance 
to the ship, it had turned and set flood so hard 
that we could make no head against it, and 
were compelled to anchor. Then the boat- 
swain told his men to lie on their arms and 



286 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

sleep while he kept watch. He lent me his 
boat-cloak and bade me sleep also ; but I could 
not. As often as I fell into a doze I lived the 
whole horror over again. 

For a time Haswell sat upright and silent, 
occasionally laying his hand on me warning! y, 
as if to say, "I hear something." After a 
while he relaxed his vigilance in a degree, and 
leaned over to talk with me in a whisper. It 
was then that he first told me he was an 
American, and spoke of Shields, our comrade, 
who was killed. I could feel that tears were 
in his eyes. He said, that the three of them 
(alluding to another who was on the sick list 
and had been left behind) had always kept an 
eye on me ; for I was then a somewhat reckless 
person. He told me, with a certain rough 
delicacy, that Shields had often watched me 
" to see that I did not fall into trouble." 

But Haswell was still the weather-eared sailor, 
and as he whispered he listened all the while. 
Presently we heard again that same low bay- 
ing ; he touched me quickly. The other men 
still slept. The sound grew louder and nearer. 
He whispered to me, " Burmese boat — don't 



Ready ! 287 

move !" Then cautiously approaching each 
man, and putting his hand over his mouth, he 
roused him, and bade him take up his arms. 

You will recollect that the Burmese war 
crews have not oars like ours, but short pad- 
dles, with which they make two sharp, per- 
pendicular plunges, followed by an interval of 
pause. They utter, in concert, a kind of yelp, 
to keep stroke together ; and although the stroke 
is very quick, they all strike the water at the 
same instant by help of this dismal monotone. 
Their boats are immensely long, sometimes 
holding a hundred men, who sit in close single 
files along the sides of the alligator-like craft. 

Our men recognized the sound, and gathered 
their arms together as noiselessly as possible. 
Some drew their cutlasses and laid them on 
the seats beside them; some took off their 
jackets, loosened their straps, and examined 
their pistols. The question with us then was, 
would the Burmese come down on our side 
of the stream, or on the other. In other words, 
were they about to run into us, or to pass on 
the other side, in the dark, without perceiving 
us? There were only eight of us, and, proba- 



288 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

bly, not less than eighty of them ; but then we 
were waiting for them, while they would not 
see us till they felt us. We were well armed 
and active, and they would surely believe they 
had fallen into a swarm. 

The tide was against them ; but Burmese 
boats do not stay for that — they are con- 
structed with an expert eye to those racing 
rivers. Being so long and sharp, and the 
paddles dipping perpendicularly, they can be 
run close under the bank, in slack water, or 
a counter current. So the tide, which com- 
pelled us to anchor, presented no material ob- 
stacle to our enemies. 

Thus, we lay in the darkness — every man 
with both hands on his weapons, ready to use 
them the next moment. There w^ere no more 
than the proper complement of arms ; but the 
boatswain drew one of his own pistols from his 
belt, and laid it on my knee. 

They did pass by on the other side (the 
stream was very narrow there), without dis- 
covering us. 

I will not enlarge upon the scene. Here was 
our little party, hidden under the jungly bank, 



My Little Friend. 289 

waiting for an accident — heads or tails, right or 
left — to decide whether or not we should sud- 
denly come into deadly conflict with ten times 
our number of savages, in pitchy darkness ; and 
there were the invisible devils, perfectly un- 
conscious of our proximity, iterating their mo- 
notonous war-note — so near, that we could 
almost have touched them with our oars. 
When the tide turned again, the captain over- 
took us ; they had passed him in the same way. 
The little English boy was found by Tarle- 
ton or Neblitt, on the bank, very near where 
I had landed, wandering about stark naked, and 
entirely crazy, with little lance wounds, mere 
scratches, in the fleshy parts of his arms and 
legs. When I plunged into the stream, he 
paused to observe what would happen. When 
he saw how they fired at me, he was afraid to 
follow, and went down into the hold of the 
boat, where he hid himself among some hos- 
pital traps. On taking possession of the boat, 
the Burmese rummaged it thoroughly, in search 
of booty, and found the boy. They dragged 
him out from among the doolees, and took 

him on deck, where they played with him, and 
13 



290 Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 

tumbled him about, felt of his limbs, wondered 
at his skin, laughed over his little clothes, and 
made game of him generally. With their dhars, 
they cut off locks of his hair. Then, to try his 
courage, they stood him up against a beam, and 
threw darts at him — slender, armed reeds, be- 
tween arrows and lances ; with these they 
grazed the skin of his arms and legs. At last, 
the boy became quite maddened with fear, and, 
suddenly breaking through the very centre of 
the party, jumped into the river. Swimming 
down the stream with the tide, he finally 
landed where the captain found him. He was 
taken down to the frigate, where he eventually 
recovered. 

Poor Shields ! A ball had struck the top of 
his left shoulder, just inside the collar-bone, 
and severed a main artery. Although, when 
we fled, we left his body in the boat, which the 
Burmese took possession of immediately— and 
although so high a price was set on British 
heads, his was spared, nor had the slightest 
insult, apparently, been offered to his corpse. 
In the search for plunder, hurried in momentary 
fear of our return or of a surprise from some 



Poor Shields ! 291 

other quarter, they had forgotten their human 
prize, or feared to seize it. Indeed, their hot 
haste was evident in the fact that they had even 
left the flags at the sterns of the boats, although 
they had made away with the camp-boxes of 
the officers — among the rest, with one, contain- 
ing three hundred rupees, brought up by a young 
ensign, no less verdant than amorous, who had 
heard of the charms of the maidens of Pegu. 

Poor Shields! he sleeps in his loneliness un- 
der the shadow of the Shway-Madoo, and the 
young Yankee sailor's grave was watered by 
tears as true as, ever eyes let fall. In Boston I 
have sought in vain for his mother. His share 
of prize-money awaits her order, in the office of 
the Superintendent of Marine, at Calcutta. 



After that, I was invalided to Calcutta, 
whence, in a few days, I sailed for home. 

When last I heard from my friends, British 
and Burmese, on the Irrawaddi, the former 
were erecting an electric telegraph, and the 
latter were regilding the Golden Dagon. The 
Stagnant Calm was stirred as though an angel 
had troubled it. 



APPENDIX, 



i. 

THE GOLDEN DAGOH IN 1590, 

— " They consume many canes, likewise, in 
making of their Varellaes, or idol temples, 

which are in great number, both great and 
small. They be made round, like a sugar-loaf; 
some are as high as a church, very broad beneath j 
some a quarter of a mile in compass: within 
they be all earth, done about with stone. 

" They consume in these Varellaes great 
quantity of gold ; for that they be all gilded 
aloft, and many of them from the top to the hot- 
torn : and every ten or twelve years they . 
be new gilded, because the rain consumeth off 
the gold : for they stand open abroad. If they 
did not consume their gold in these vanities, it 
would be very plentiful, and good, and cheap 
in Pegu. 

"About two days' journey from Pegu, there 
is a Vareliae, or pagoda, which is the pilgrim- 
age of the Pegues : it is called Dagonne (Da 
gong), and is of wonderful bigness, and all 



294 Appendix. 

gilded from the foot to the top. And there is 
a house by it wherein the tallipoies, which are 
the priests, do preach. This house is fifty-five 
paces in length, and hath three parones or 
walks in it, and forty great pillars, gilded, 
which stand between the walks ; and it is 
open on all sides with a number of small 
pillars, which be likewise gilded. It is gilded 
with gold within and without. 

"There are houses very fair round about for 
the pilgrims to lie in, and many goodly houses 
for the tallipoies to preach in, wmich are full of 
images, both of men and women, which are 
gilded over with gold. It is the fairest place, 
as I suppose, that is in the world : it standeth 
very high, and there are four ways to it, which 
all along are set with trees of fruits, in such 
wise that a man may go in the shade about 
two miles in length. And when their feast- 
day is, a man can hardly pass, by water or 
land, for the great press of people : for they 
come from all places of the kingdom of Pegu 
thither at their feast." — Ralph Fitch, a London 
Merchant. 



The Karens. 295 

II. 

THE KARENS. 

" When I first came to this coast, the Karens 
were regarded as the aborigines of the country, 
but they were probably, in reality, the last peo- 
ple to enter it among the various tribes that the 
British found here, when they took possession 
of the provinces. 

" They regard themselves as wanderers from 
the North, and one of their traditions states that a 
party of them came across ' the river of running 
sand,' on an exploring tour, before the Shans 
were established at Zimmay, and returned 
again. The crossing of the ' river of running 
sand,' is regarded as having been an arduous 
work. They understand by these waters, or 
river, of running sand (the words admit of either 
rendering), an immense quicksand, with the 
sands in motion like the waters of a river. The 
tradition was quite unintelligible to me until 
the Journal of Fa-Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, 
who visited India about the fifth century, threw 
a sun-beam on the expression. He constantly 
designates the great desert north of Burmah, 
and between China and Thibet, as ' the river of 
sand ; ' and in the Chinese map of India, a 



296 Appendix. 

branch of this desert is seen to stretch down 
south, for several degrees of latitude, and then 
turn and run westward for a long distance. 
This desert is marked ' quicksands.' There can, 
therefore, scarcely be a rational doubt that this 
is ' the river of running sand,' which their an- 
cestors crossed at a remote period before Zim- 
may was founded. 

" Tradition further states, that when the 
Karen nation immigrated to this country they 
found the Shans, contrary to their expectation, 
dwelling in the region of Zimmay. Serica and 
Sera, and the river Serus, are represented by 
Ptolemy as in the region north of Burmah ; and, 
from incidental notices in the old poetry of the 
Karens, it appears that there was a country 
north of these provinces, known to them in anci- 
ent times, by the name of Sairai. One stanza 
runs thus : 

" ' The waters of Sairai, of Sairai, 
The country of Sairai, of Sairai — 
It is famous for the frogs that are there, 
It is famous for the fish that are there.' 

" Malte Brun, on the authority of Marco Polo, 
says : — ' The country of Caride is the south- 
east point of Thibet, and perhaps the country 
of the nation of the Caraines, which is spread 
over Ava ;' and Teen — a word signifying Heaven, 



The Karens. 297 

but used by some of the Chinese to signify God 
— occurs in Karen poetry, as the name of the 
God of a people with whom they were formerly 
connected. The Karen language also indicates 
a connection with tribes on the borders of Thi- 
bet. 

" Besides the Khakyeens north of Ava, there 
are known to be two distinct tribes of Karens. 
One tribe call themselves ' Shos,' but are called 
by the Sgaus, ' Pwos,' and by the Burmese, 
1 Meetkhyeens,' or, ' Tailing Karens.' The 
other tribe call themselves Sgaus, but by the 
Burmese are designated ' Meelthos,' or, ; Bur- 
man Karens.' 

" To these some' add the Karenees, or Red 
Karens, but they are more usually regarded as 
a Shan tribe. Their language, from Karen 
testimony, and from the examination of a few 
words, appears not to be so nearly related to 
either Pwo or Sgau as the latter are to each 
other ; but there are manifestly many roots com- 
mon to all three, as in Karen and Youngthu. 
The Burmans call them Red Karens from a por- 
tion of their dress being red ; and the Karens 
call them Mannegpha, or Kidnappers, from their 
practice of kidnapping their neighbors and sell- 
ing them into slavery. None of them live within 
the boundaries of the British territories, or Bur- 

rnah proper, nor have they ever been visited 
13* 



298 Appendix. 

by missionaries ; but Dr. Richardson traveled 
through their country in 1837. They appear 
to occupy a strip of land in the valley of the 
Sal ween, between Burmah and the Shan States. 
Dr. Richardson wrote that they were in the 
lowest state of civilization, and appeared few 
in number, — perhaps as numerous as the Young- 
thus. 

" The Pwos and Sgaus are scattered all over 
the Tenasserim provinces, the southern parts 
of Burmah, and Arracan. Their languages, 
though dialects of a common language, and 
both easily acquired when one has been mas- 
tered, are sufficiently distinct to make a Pwo 
unintelligible to a Sgau, and a Sgau to a Pwo, 
unless both idioms have been studied. 

" The Sgaus are remarkable for the Scriptu- 
ral traditions that exist among them. They 
have traditions of the creation, the temptation, 
the fall, and the dispersion of nations, in prose 
and verse, nearly as accurate as they are found 
in the Bible. The following is a single speci- 
men : 

" ' Anciently, God commanded, but Satan appeared bringing 

destruction : 
Formerly God commanded, but Satan appeared deceiving 

unto death. 
The woman E-u and the man Tha-nai pleased not the eye 

of the dragon, 



The Karens. 299 

The persons of E-u and Tha-nai pleased not the mind of 

the dragon, 
The dragon looked on them, — the dragon beguiled the 

woman and Tha-nai. 

" ' How is this said to have happened ? 
The great dragon succeeded in deceiving — deceiving unto 
death. 

" ' How do they say it was done ? 
A yellow fruit took the great dragon, and gave to the 

children of God. 
A white fruit took the great dragon, and gave to the 

daughter and son of God. 

" ' They transgressed the commands of God, and God turned 
his face from them. 

They transgressed the commands of God, and God turned 
away from them. 

They kept not all the words of God— were deceived, de- 
ceived unto sickness ; 

They kept not all the law of God— were deceived, deceived 
unto death.' 

" The languages of both tribes have been 
reduced to writing, and various works pre- 
pared in the two idioms. In the Sgau, a dic- 
tionary and grammar have been printed ; the 
whole Bible has been translated ; two editions 
of the New Testament; one of Genesis, Exo- 
dus, and Psalms, printed ; and between thirty 
and forty other books. In the Pwo, a gram- 
mar, a small vocabulary, and about half the 
New Testament, have been printed, and less 



300 Appendix. 

than a dozen other works. Newspapers are 
also printed in both dialects, and in Burmese. 
In the Tenasserim provinces alone, more than 
fifty different villages and hamlets have been 
occupied for a longer or shorter period by 
native assistants, under the direction of the 
missionaries, most of whom have had charge 
of schools."— Rev. F. Mason. 



The Ponghees. 301 



III. 

THE POONGHEES. 

"In Pegu they have many tallipoies, or 
priests, which preach against all abuses. Many 
men resort unto them. When they enter into 
their Kiack (Kyaong) — that is to say, their 
holy place or temple — at the door there is a 
great jar of water with a cock or ladle in it, 
and there they wash their feet, and then they 
enter in, and lift up their hands to their heads, 
first to their preacher and then to the sun, and 
so sit down. 

" The tallipoies go very strangely appareled, 
with one gamboline, or thin cloth, next to their 
body, of a brown color; another of yellow, 
doubled many times on their shoulder; and 
these two be girded to them with a broad 
girdle ; and they have a skin of leather hanging 
on a string about their necks, whereupon they 
sit bareheaded and barefooted — for none of 
them weareth shoes — with their right arms 
bare, and a great broad sombrero, or shadow, 
in their hands, to defend them in the summer 
from the sun, and in the winter from the rain. 



302 Appendix. 



"When the tallipoies, or priests, take their 
orders, first they go to school until they be 
twenty years old or more, and then they come 
before a tallipoie appointed for that purpose, 
whom they call a Rawii : he is of the chiefest 
and most learned, and he opposeth them, and 
afterwards examineth them many times, wheth- 
er they will leave their friends, and the com- 
pany of all women, and take upon them the 
habit of a tallipoie. If any be content, then he 
rideth upon a horse about the streets, very 
richly appareled, with drums and pipes, to 
show that he leaveth the riches of the world to 
be a tallipoie. In a few days he is carried upon 
a thing like a horse-litter, which they call a 
Serion, upon ten or twelve men's shoulders, in 
the apparel of a tallipoie, with pipes and drums 
and many tallipoies with him, and all his 
friends ; and so they go with him to his house, 
which standeth upon the town, and then they 
leave him. 

" Every one of them hath his house, which 
is very little, set upon six or eight posts, and 
they go up to them with a ladder of twelve or 
fourteen staves. Their houses be, for the most 
part, by the highway's side, and among the 
trees, and in the woods. 

" And they go with a great pot made of 
wood or fine earth, and covered, tied with a 



The Ponghees. 303 

broad girdle upon their shoulder, which cometh 
under their arm, wherewith they go to beg 
their victuals, which is rice, fish, and herbs. 
They demand nothing, but come to the door, 
and the people presently do give them, some 
one thing and some another ; and they put all 
together in their pot ; for they say they must eat 
of their alms and therewith content themselves. 

" They keep their feasts by the moon ; and 
when it is new moon, they keep their greatest 
feast, and then the people send other things to 
that kiack, or church, of which they be. And 
then all the tallipoies do meet, which be of 
that church, and eat the victuals which are 
sent them. 

"When the tallipoies do preach, many of 
the people carry them gifts into the pulpit 
where they sit and preach ; and there is one 
which sitteth by them to take that which the 
people bring. It is divided among them. They 
have none other ceremonies nor service that I 
could see, but only preaching." — Ralph Fitch, 
a London Merchant. 



304 Appendix. 



IV. 

BURMESE LAW. 

" All writers are unanimous in the cry that 
there is no potentate upon earth equally despot- 
ic with the Lord of Burmah. There is no dis- 
guise about the fact, and he openly asserts in 
his titles, that he is lord, ruler, and sole pos- 
sessor of the lives, persons, and property of his 
subjects. He advances and degrades ; his word 
alone can promote a beggar to the highest rank, 
and his word can also utterly displace the proud- 
est officer of his court. His people is a capa- 
cious store-house, whence he obtains tools to 
work his will. As soon as any person becomes 
distinguished by his wealth or influence, then 
does he pay the penalty with his life. He is 
apprehended on some supposed crime, and is 
never heard of more. Every Burman is born 
the king's slave, and it is an honor ,to the 
subject to be so called by his sovereign. 

" It is, however, an honor, both to the insti- 
tutor of the Burman law, and the sovereign, 
who, though absolute, obeyed it, to mention 
that no married woman can be seized on by the 



Burmese Law. 305 

emissaries of the king. This, of course, leads 
the Burmese to contract marriages very earl 3', 
either actually or fictitiously. 

" The property of persons who die without 
heirs is swept into the coffers of the State, and 
by law, the property of unmarried foreigners 
is subject to the same regulation upon their 
death. Jetsam and flotsam belong to the king. 
He alone decides upon peace and war, brings 
the population to the rescue. All serve — all 
are conscripts. The only effectual restraint, 
as Crawfurd remarks, on the excesses of mal- 
administration, is the apprehension of insurrec- 
tion. 

" However, notwithstanding that he is ac- 
knowledged as absolute, he has two nominal 
councils, — a public one and a cabinet. But he 
is neither bound to abide by their advice — nor 
does he. His measures are predetermined, and, 
should they prove unwilling to give an imme- 
diate and unconditional assent, he has been 
known to chase his ministers from his presence, 
with a drawn sword. 

" The workman who built the present palace, 
committed some professional mistake in the 
construction of the spire. The king remon- 
strated with him, saying that it would not 
stand. The architect pertinaciously insisted 
upon its stability and sufficiency, and was 



306 Appendix. 

committed for contumacy. Shortly afterward 
the spire fell in a thunder-storm, and about the 
same time accounts were received at court, of 
the arrival of the British expedition ; upon 
which the architect was sent for from prison, 
taken to the place of execution, and forthwith 
decapitated. This, although upon a small scale, 
is a fair example both of the despotism and 
superstition by which this people are borne 
down. 

" On another occasion, the king, for a very 
slight offense, had forty of his highest officers 
laid on their faces in the public street, before 
the palace wall — kept for hours in a broiling 
sun with a beam extended across their bodies." 

The following is the form of address which 
an English envoy received with the recommend- 
ation that he should pronounce it before the 
king: 

" ' Placing above our heads the golden majesty 
of the Mighty Lord, the Possessor of the mines 
of rubies, amber, gold, silver, and all kinds of 
metal ; of the Lord, under whose command are 
innumerable soldiers, generals, and captains ; of 
the Lord who is King of many countries and 
provinces, and Emperor over many Kulers and 
Princes who wait round his throne with thf 
badges of his authority ; of the Lord, who is 
adorned with the greatest power, wisdom, 



Burmese Law. 307 

knowledge, prudence, foresight, etc. ; of the 
Lord, who is rich in the possession of elephants, 
and horses, and in particular is the Lord of 
many White Elephants ; of the Lord who is 
the greatest of kings, the most just and the 
most religious, the master of life and death ; 
we his slaves, the Governor of Bengal, the offi- 
cers and administrators of the Company, bowing 
and lowering our heads under the sole of his 
royal golden foot, do present to him with the 
greatest veneration, this our humble petition.' 

" Crawfurd and Sangermano mention in- 
stances of the strange proceedings of the Bur- 
man courts : — 

* In 1817, an old Burmese woman, in the 
service of a European gentleman, was cited be- 
fore the Rung-d'hau, or Court of Justice, of Ran- 
goon. Her master appeared on her behalf, and 
was informed that her offense consisted in having 
neglected to report a theft committed upon her- 
self three years before, by which the government 
officers were defrauded of the fees and profits 
which ought to have accrued from the investigation 
or trial. On receiving this information, he was 
about to retire, in order to make arrangements 
to exonerate her, when he was seized by two 
messengers of the court, and informed, that by 
appearing in the business he had rendered him- 
self responsible, and could not be released, 



3°8 Appendix. 

unless some other individual were left in pledge 
for him, until the old woman's person were 
produced. A Burman lad, his servant, who 
accompanied him, was accordingly left in the 
room. In an hour he returned with the accused, 
and found, that in the interval, the lad left in 
pledge had been put into the stocks, his ankles 
squeezed in them, and by this means, a little 
money which he had about his person, and a 
new handkerchief, extorted from him. The 
old woman was now put into the stocks in her 
turn, and detained there until all were paid, 
when she was discharged without any investiga- 
tion whatever into the theft. 

" A poor widow, who was hard pinched to 
pay the tax demanded of her, was obliged to 
sell her only daughter to obtain the sum. The 
money was received, and, heavy at heart, she 
returned home and put it in a box in her house, 
intending to lament that night and carry the 
money to her inexorable creditor in the morning. 
But the measure of her sorrows was not yet 
full. Some thieves broke into the house and 
stole the money. In the morning she discover- 
ed her loss, and this additional circumstance 
caused the bounds of her grief to flow even 
beyond that of silence, and, sitting before her 
door, she gave herself up to loud lamentations. 
As she was weeping, an emissary of the city 



Burmese Law. 



3°9 



magistrate passed by, and inquired into the 
cause of her sorrow. He, upon hearing the sad 
story, related the matter to his master. The 
poor creature was then summoned to the Court 
of Justice, and commanded to deliver up the 
thief. Of course, this was impossible. She 
was detained in the stocks until she could 
scrape together money enough to satisfy the 
rapacity of the judge. 

"Sometimes these affairs are very comical: 
" A woman employed in cooking fish for 
dinner was called away for an instant. The 
cat, watching her opportunity, seized a half- 
roasted fish and ran out of the house. The 
woman immediately ran after the cat, exclaim- 
ing: 'The cat has stolen my fish!' A few 
days after she was summoned before the magis- 
trate, who demanded the thief at her hands. 
It was of no use that she explained that the 
thief was a cat. His time was valuable, and 
the expenses of the court must be paid." — 
Mackenzie's " Burmah and the Burmese" 



310 Appendix. 



IMPERIAL PEGU. 

"Pegu is a city, strong, and very fair, with 
walls of stone, and great ditches round about it. 

"There are two towns, the old and the new. 
In the old town are all the merchant strangers, 
and very many merchants of the country. All 
the goods are sold in the old town, which is 
very great, and hath many suburbs round about 
it ; and all the houses are made of canes, which 
they call bamboo, and be covered with straw. 
In your house you have a warehouse, or 
godon, which is made of brick, to put your 
goods in, for oftentimes they take fire, and 
burn, in an hour, four or five hundred houses ; 
so that if the godon were not, you should be 
in danger to have all burnt in a trice. 

" In the new town is the king and all his 
nobility and gentry. It is a city very great 
and populous, and is made square, and with 
fair walls, and a great ditch round about it, full 
of water, with many crocodiles in it. It hath 
twenty gates, and they be made of stone : for 
every square, five gates. There are also many 



Imperial Pegu. 31 1 

turrets for sentinels to watch, made of wood, 
and gilded with gold very fair. The streets are 
the fairest that ever I saw — as straight as a 
line from one gate to another, and so broad 
that ten or twenty men may ride apart through 
them. On both sides them, at every man's 
door, is set a palm-tree — -which is the nut-tree — - 
which makes a very fair show, and a very com- 
modious shadow, so that a man may walk in 
the shade all day. The houses be made of 
wood, and covered with tile. The king's house 
is in the middle of the city, and is walled and 
ditched round about ; and the buildings within 
are made of wood, very sumptuously gilded ; 
and great workmanship is upon the fore-front, 
which is likewise very costly gilded. And the 
house wherein his pagoda or idol standeth, is 
covered with tiles of silver, and all the walls 
are gilded with gold. 

"Within the first gate of the king's house is 
a great large room, on both sides whereof are 
houses made for the king's elephants, which be 
marvelous great and fair, and are brought up 
to wars, and in service of the king : and among 
the rest he has four white elephants, which are 
very strange and rare ; for there is none other 
king hath them but he : if any other king hath 
one, he will send to him for it."— Ralph Fitch, 
a London Merchant. ~- ~ 




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